


Revolvers and Lyrium

by chileancarmenere



Category: Dragon Age II, The Heat
Genre: Cop AU, Dragon Age Big Bang 2014, F/M, Modern AU with Magic, buddy cop genre, crossover AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:13:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chileancarmenere/pseuds/chileancarmenere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern Dragon Age cop AU crossed over very freestyle with The Heat. Aveline Vallen is a straight-laced, by-the-book cop from Denerim. Isabela Rivaini is a free-spirited, liberated-in-every-way cop from Kirkwall. Aveline is on loan to Captain Bran from the Denerim police to track down a slaving gang headed by the elusive "Larkin", but she can't do it without the help of Isabela, who has an awful lot of mysterious links to the gang. Strip clubs are visited, one very embarrassing naughty cop costume is worn, the aid of 1) a broody (and very handsome) tattooed elf, 2) a chatty (and very cute) tattooed elf, 3) a pretty, lyrium-researching mage, 4) a politically inclined stripper is enlisted, misogynistic assholes are mercilessly mocked, and in the middle of it all, two gorgeous, smart, kickass women find they actually maybe-sort-of-kinda care about each other after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Operation Duster Busters

**LOG REPORT ON STING ‘OPERATION DUSTERS’: OFFICER IN CHARGE SPECIAL AGENT AVELINE VALLEN: TIMESTAMP FOR MISSION START AT 0900 16 HARVESTMERE 9:30 DRAGON AGE**

**0900\. VANS LEAVE FOR HOUSE OF INTEREST. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN PLUS DRIVER AND SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA ON BOARD VAN ONE. LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD WITH TEST SQUAD OF LYRIUM DETECTING DEEPSTALKERS ON BOARD VAN TWO. EN ROUTE SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA PETITIONS FOR RENAME AS SQUAD AWESOME. PETITION DENIED BY SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN.**

**0923\. VAN ARRIVES AT HOUSE OF INTEREST. SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA DEBARKS. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN DEBARKS. SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA CIRCLES AROUND TO SIDE OF HOUSE. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN ORDERS BY SIGN LANGUAGE FOR SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA TO WAIT FOR THREE COUNT. SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA DOES NOT WAIT FOR THREE COUNT. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN INSINUATES SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA INCAPABLE OF COUNTING TO THREE.**

**0924\. SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA ENTERS HOUSE. THREE DWARVES FOUND IN LIVING ROOM WATCHING BRONTO RACING ON TELEVISION AND EATING BARBECUE NUG. SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA DETAINS THREE DWARVES WHILE LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD COMBS DOWN HOUSE. DWARF PROTESTS AGAINST IMPROMPTU DIRTY LIMERICK COMPOSITION BY SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA ON SUBJECT OF THREE DWARVES. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN CALLS CONDUCT OF SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA UNSPORTSMANLIKE.**

**1012\. LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD REPORTS TO SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN THAT NO LYRIUM OR WEAPONRY WAS FOUND IN HOUSE OF INTEREST. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN DISAGREES. LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD LEADER BHELEN SUGGESTS HE IS IN POSSESSION OF VASTLY SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE OF LYRIUM INVESTIGATION AND SUGGESTS SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN REMOVE ALLEGED STICK FROM RECTUM. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN SUGGESTS LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD LEADER BHELEN WATCH AND LEARN.**

**1015\. LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD LOADS THREE BAGS OF LYRIUM DUST INTO VAN TWO WITH APPROXIMATE TOTAL WEIGHT 5.948539402 POUNDS. SQUAD ALPHA ALPHA HELPS TO CARRY OUT WEAPONRY. SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN IMPLIES LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD LEADER BHELEN STILL HAS WORK TO DO TRAINING LYRIUM DETECTING DEEPSTALKERS. LYRIUM INVESTIGATION SQUAD LEADER BHELEN REMARKS ON SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN’S BODY IN MOST UNFLATTERING TERMS. CHIP IN VAN’S PAINT PRESUMABLY FROM SPECIAL AGENT VALLEN’S RING AFTER PUNCHES THROWN.**

**1036\. VANS RETURN TO DENERIM POLICE PRECINCT. CLOSE REPORT.**

 

A dwarf with terminal scoliosis could see over the tops of the cubicles in the Denerim police precinct without breaking a sweat, so Aveline Vallen could casually swivel her chair to glance at the drawn blinds in Director Cailan Theirin’s office without bothering to get up. She just knew something big was happening in there. Since she got back this morning from Operation Dusters (she’d called it “Duster-busters” around the coffee machine that lunchtime and was still surprised nobody had laughed) the precinct was buzzing with the news. A police agent from Kirkwall was visiting Denerim on “top secret” business, and what was more surprising was that the top secret business had actually stayed top secret. Usually the Denerim agents ferreted out any information marked with anything resembling “DO NOT READ” within a few hours. As yet, all the Denerim agents had were wild rumors.

But Aveline hadn’t gotten to the top ranks of law enforcement in Ferelden on her family connections, not that they would have helped after that nasty diplomatic incident with Orlais a few years ago. She had a knack for finding things out. Generally things that criminals would prefer to keep hidden. And she knew that this Kirkwall agent wasn’t here for tea and Fereldan mabari biscuits; he was here because Kirkwall wanted help.

“Special Agent Vallen?” She snapped back into it as a temp offered her a stack of papers. Muttering a quick thanks, she glanced down and just stifled a groan. If there was one thing she hated about a successful sting, it was the mountain of paperwork that came after. Were police protocols followed, yes, did all the perps get their rights read, yes, did all perps get access to their lawyers within the required amount of time, close enough, if a criminal farted was it recorded in the log report…

“Vallen!”

She jolted at Director Theirin’s bark. The blond-haired man was beckoning her from the office. Hastily, she set down the paperwork and rose to follow.

Director Theirin had one of the nicest offices she’d ever seen, and had managed to decorate it with such breathtakingly poor taste and ostentation that the inside nickname for him at the precinct was King Cailan. Standing at the window was a tall red-haired man with a haughty expression, whom Director Theirin introduced as Captain Bran. Captain Bran gave Aveline some sort of gesture that might have been interpreted as a nod, or alternately a stifled sneeze.

Director Theirin shuffled the notes on his desk like a news anchor. “Vallen, Kirkwall’s looking for some outside help on a problem they’re having. Since you’re the best agent we’ve got for tracking down elusive criminals, I suggested you. I’ll let the captain fill you in.”

Captain Bran coughed, unfolding his arms. “Right. You probably know Kirkwall has a history of problems with slavers.” He gave Aveline just enough time to nod. In Ferelden the practise was all but stamped out, thanks to a dedicated special tasks force and aggressive public advertising campaigns, but in other countries illegal slavery continued to be rampant. “We’ve been able to mostly keep it under control, but in the past few months something’s ramped up. We suspect there’s been a switch-up near the top of whatever organization’s doing the slaving, but we’ve only got names at this point. No faces or leads.” He strolled to the windows, looking out on Denerim’s thriving downtown. “I would prefer to keep this within Kirkwall law enforcement, but this outreach program dreamed up by the city viscount means that he ordered me to get outside help on this.” The captain puckered up his mouth as he added “…and we’ve made no real headway, so if it gets the slavers off our streets, I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

“That’s not the warmest invitation I’ve ever had.”

“What do you want? A bouquet of flowers?” Captain Bran shook his head. “I’ll give the truth to you straight and plain; we need the best help, and the best help’s you, according to Cailan. I don’t like Kirkwall not being able to solve its own problems, but as it turns out, it’s not capable of solving its own problems right now.”

Director Theirin cut in. “We’ll move you up to Kirkwall and pay all living expenses in addition to your regular salary. Prime Minister Anora’s been making noises about greater cooperation with our neighbors, so she’ll be all for it.”

Aveline pretended to deliberate for a moment, but she already knew she’d go. It was a great challenge that would stretch her to her limits, but the idea of protecting people from slime like slavers was what really drew her to Kirkwall. “I’ll pack my bags.”


	2. Red Convertibles

A red convertible is an ostentatious vehicle. First the color and then the make draws people’s eyes as they walk down the street. Who is this person and why do they drive such an ostentatious vehicle, they wonder. If you were to pick a good car for someone who wanted to be stealthy and unobtrusive, surely a red convertible would be among the last cars on your list.

Isabela found refuge in audacity. As it turned out, red convertibles were a dandy vehicle for detectives to drive, because no right-thinking criminal would ever suspect that a law-abiding individual was behind the wheel of that car. At the very least, drivers of red convertibles tend to speed. In all fairness, so did Isabela; she was just speeding after criminals instead.

However, at the moment, Isabela wasn’t speeding anywhere. She had her eye on a more stationary prize: Hayder, an individual she just happened to know was in with the slaver gangs in Kirkwall. It looked like either the slaver gangs or Hayder himself was branching out into other lucrative pursuits, though, because he was engaged in what looked very much like an illicit lyrium deal on the street. Hayder was talking to a hooded man, whose body language Isabela could read easily from her parked car across the street; he looked like he had the gift and was shaking for his next fix. Lyrium trading, while legal, had to go through very specific routes; you couldn’t go selling it on the streets. Naturally, since the prices for legal lyrium were so high and the stuff was so useful, there was a thriving illegal lyrium trade, particularly in Kirkwall where there were so many people with the gift.

Hayder’s head bent towards the hooded man, and his body language took on an urgent tone. Isabela felt her heart speed up. She hadn’t been able to prove Hayder’s links to the slaver gangs, so up till now she hadn’t been able to pull him in. But if she caught him in an illegal lyrium deal, she could pull him in for that and squeeze him for what she _really_ wanted to know. Sure, his lawyer would probably kick up a fuss about that, but the great thing about Kirkwall defense lawyers is that they were all a lazy bunch and took longer at lunch than Isabela ever did.

The hooded man finally nodded and did the classic left-right glance that always preceded some sort of illegal activity. Isabela giggled to herself. They never seemed to learn. Hayder reached into his inner coat pocket, and as the container swiftly passed hands Isabela caught the distinctive glint of powdered lyrium. She hopped out of the car and strolled towards them. “Morning, gentleman.”

The hooded man glanced at her. “Yeah, we’re not looking for a hooker.”

“Oh, not a problem,” she replied sunnily. “Just checking in on my old friend here.”

Hayder jerked around at the words. “Isabela!”

Andraste’s tits, but she lived for that moment of dawning realization. She popped the handcuffs from her belt and shook them open. “Miss me?”

“I’m gonna have to say no.” He took off into a sprint down the road. The hooded man suddenly realized what was going on, and rushed off in such a hurry he dropped the container of lyrium. Isabela bent over and picked it up, then looked down the road after Hayder.

A moment later she was in her car, boot slammed down on the accelerator. Hayder glanced back and almost tripped over his feet; his eyes widened at the sight of Isabela behind the wheel. He darted to his right down an alley. Isabela spun the steering wheel, braking so the car slid around in a harsh squeal of rubber on asphalt. She stepped on the gas again, rocketing into the alley and taking out a few unluckily-placed garbage cans. Hayder yelped at the sound as they went flying, and dodged right again, this time down a gap between houses. Isabela pulled up just in time to see him scaling a chain-link fence and racing towards the next street over. She swore under her breath, speeding down the alley and accelerating down the street. She stopped at the road Hayder had just disappeared down, scanning desperately for him. If she lost him…

A trace of movement caught her eye, and she saw Hayder’s ponytail whipping around the corner. “I’m coming for you,” she muttered, hooking the handcuff on the cup holder for easy access. The red convertible sped down the street, and she turned just in time to see Hayder running towards the park. “Come on baby,” she said through gritted teeth, patting the dashboard. The car caught up with Hayder just as he entered the park; she disregarded signs about pedestrians only and hit the curb with a terrific bounce, braking just before the car hit the trees. She vaulted over the convertible’s door and ran Hayder down with three enormous strides, jumping at his back and taking him down with her.

“Lemme up!” he gasped. Isabela jammed her knee into his back. “Not a damn chance. You’re only getting up with handcuffs on you.” She dangled the lyrium container in front of his face. “Recognize this?”

“You planted that!” He did his best I’m-innocent-and-this-is-a-container-completely-unknown-to-me face. Isabela just laughed, snapping the cuffs on. “Well, if my word isn’t enough, I’m sure the fingerprints will prove you completely innocent.”


	3. Introductions

Aveline sipped at a coffee in one of Kirkwall’s tonier coffeehouses, feeling revived just with the scent of coffee and muffins. The plane over had been a nightmare with screaming kids, and then the rental place had managed to completely lose her reservation. She’d been forced to pull her badge to get a rental car and even then the car had a funny smell to it, reminiscent of lyrium. Kirkwall did seem to suffer from a lack of law and order in certain quarters.

She paid up at the counter, getting directions to Viscount’s Hall and the police quarters from a friendly barista. In Kirkwall, the police headquarters were situated right in their city hall, which seemed to Aveline to indicate a conflict of interest, but then she wasn’t here to investigate the Kirkwall police force.

Viscount’s Hall was an imposing building; she remembered reading something about how it was built during the days when Tevinter had controlled the city-state. Which meant it was probably built with slave labor; Aveline went through the sliding gilded glass doors with a feeling of distaste. The police headquarters was tucked off to the side through the imposing entry hall. She went up the stairs and into the bustling precinct, feeling more at home in the clamor. A tall man with a square face and a shock of long brown hair waved at her from in front of a large whiteboard covered in lists. “Aveline Vallen?”

“Yes?”

He strode up to her and shook her hand firmly. “I’m Donnic Hendyr, Kirkwall special agent. I’ve been assigned to help your investigation. How was your flight?”

“Fine. I’ll need your files on all known slavers and their associates in the area.”

He blinked. “Ah…right. Just give me a second.” He led her to an untidy cubicle. “Sorry about the mess,” he apologized while he shuffled through stacks of paper. “Here.” She held out her hands and he dumped a stack of papers into her arms. “Actually, we just had someone brought in you might be interested in. Technically he was brought in on lyrium charges, but the officer that brought him in thinks he’s in with the slaver gangs.”

Aveline perked up at the news. “Oh, excellent. Show him to an interrogation room, will you?”

Donnic looked hesitant. “Um, could you wait till Detective Rivaini is back from lunch? She’s sort of picky about letting people near her perps.”

Aveline tapped her nails on the stack of files. “Officer Hendyr, I am a trained and experienced interrogator, and I assure you that I’m here to get results. So if you would be so kind, please show the perp to an interrogation room.”

Donnic looked like a man with a strong will, but Aveline had a glare that would drop most men to their knees begging for mercy. He folded as she knew he would and beckoned for her to follow him. They weaved through the maze of cubicles to the hallway, where he led her to a row of interrogation rooms across from the holding cells. Aveline settled down in one, making herself comfortable. So much depended on the appearance of holding all the cards, even if she didn’t.

It was only a few minutes before Donnic brought in a tall, disheveled-looking man with his hair tied back in a messy ponytail. The man’s eyes flicked from Donnic to Aveline and back; she read in that worried glance that he was familiar with Kirkwall law enforcement and was wondering who Aveline might be.

Well, he was shortly to find out. Donnic bowed out and Aveline slid a cup of coffee towards the man, who picked it up awkwardly cupped in his handcuffed hands. She tapped the table for his attention.

“Special Agent Vallen. From your file, you are Mr Hayder, no surname known, so likely an alias. History of petty run-ins with the law: they include several separate charges on illegal lyrium trades, one count of assault, later dropped, breaking-and-entering into the local Chantry…” she pretended to consult the file and pursed her lips. “Quite a few nights spent in the Kirkwall drunk tank, I see. But that isn’t why you’re here.” She snapped the file shut and leaned across the table, her hands clasped prayer-like. “Mr Hayder, you’re here because I need your help. I suspect that lyrium dealing isn’t the only thing you’re doing on Kirkwall’s streets.”

Hayder raised his coffee to mouth height and glared at her over it. “You don’t know shit about Kirkwall. And you don’t know shit about me, whatever you pretend you’re reading in your file.”

Aveline pretended to heave a sigh of disappointment. She reached into her bag and pulled out the folder she’d spent the flight assembling, carefully marked “Kirkwall Slavers’ Case”. Hayder noticed. “Wait…you think _what_ …”

She raised an eyebrow at him, not speaking, and spread the contents of the folder across the desk with an expert flick of her wrist. Hayder jerked back as if she’d sprayed him with wyvern poison, but she watched his reaction carefully as he scanned the pictures she’d laid in front of him. As he struggled to remain composed, she was sure he knew something he was holding back. Detective Rivaini, whoever she was, had good instincts.

“So is the lyrium dealing with their blessing, or is that just something on the side when you need extra cash? I can’t imagine your bosses approve of the sloppy way you go about it. I mean, broad daylight right in front of a detective?”

Hayder shook his head almost violently, the coffee coming perilously close to spilling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.” Aveline’s fingers danced over the images, coming to rest on a good picture that Captain Bran had told her was one of the few good shots they had of Castillon.

“Castillon’s high up there, but he’s not the big bad. All we know about the guy at the top is that his name’s Larkin,” Bran had said as they waited in the Denerim airport. “From what we can tell, Castillon gets his orders right from the top. Trouble is, if we find Castillon and pull him, Larkin’s going to go to ground and we’ll never find him. So what we need from you is to get to Castillon and find out who this Larkin is and where we can find him. Castillon’s a clever son of a bitch, though, he keeps himself well out of anything we can trace back to him.”

Facing Hayder now, Aveline was determined to get at least one good lead out of him. Nobody was threatening innocents on her watch. She held up the image. “What do you make of this picture?”

Hayder was more composed now. “That you people take bad pictures?”

Aveline laid it back down with an audible smack. “Do you want to know what I make of it? That you reacted as soon as you saw it? I know these are bad people. I get that. I’m trying to keep them from hurting other people. I don’t care about your lyrium dealing right now. You’re not a bad person, Hayder, you’re just mixed up with the wrong people. I can protect you if you help me, but I can’t protect you if you don’t do anything for me. This is a trade.”

“Thanks for the offer, Mom.” Hayder sat back, smirking. “But I think I know my rights, and I think I want my lawyer right goddamn now.”

As if in a bad play, the door opened right at that moment, and definitely not a lawyer came in.

The woman was all curves and fire in her eyes and oh sweet Andraste why did this individual have a gun in her hand. Aveline jerked back involuntarily in her chair. “Can I help you?”

The definitely-not-a-lawyer pointed at Aveline. “Sure, you can help me. You can help me by telling me what the fuck you’re doing in this room with my perp.”

“ _You’re_ Detective Rivaini?” Aveline asked in disbelief. The woman nodded. “And you’re interrogating my perp. We’re not playing twenty questions here, what are you doing in this room?”

Feeling somewhat relieved that this wasn’t an invasion of the police station, Aveline decided to go on the attack. “I’m Special Agent Vallen, on a special investigation in Kirkwall. I’m interviewing Mr Hayder as part of this investigation, and I think you’ll find I’m fully within my rights to be doing so.”

“Well, isn’t that nice.” Detective Rivaini walked around the table, scanning the opened folder. “But I don’t care if you happen to be the empress of Orlais, nobody talks to my perps without me.”

“The empress of Orlais was deposed over a hundred years ago,” Aveline said automatically and then decided that probably wasn’t the point. “Whether or not you like it, I’m in the middle of a discussion with Mr Hayder right now and I would really prefer it if you would leave so I could get on with it -”

Two things happened at once. Detective Rivaini reached for a paper and Aveline paused mid-sentence to focus on the imminent threat of someone other than her reading her files, and the door banged open again to reveal a very irate lawyer.

“Took you long enough,” Hayder said, moving his coffee to a safe distance away from Detective Rivaini. A wise precaution, as the detective glared at the lawyer with such ferocity Aveline half-expected her to snarl. “Fine,” the woman barked. “Good job, you. Put him up on those lyrium dealing charges. I’m sure that will make the streets _so much safer_.” She stalked out and slammed the door so hard that Aveline’s coffee spilled all over her good shot of Castillon. She rather lost heart after that, as with the lawyer there any attempts to steer the conversation in the direction of slavers were completely futile. She ended the interview with some measly lyrium charges and a court date so far away she was sure he wouldn’t show up for it.

Donnic caught up with her as she left the interrogation room. “I’m sorry, I probably should have warned you about Isabela…Detective Rivaini.”

“The woman’s a menace,” Aveline said irritably. “Who brings a loaded gun into an interrogation room? She should have been up on charges years ago with that sort of behavior.”

Donnic’s eyes slid away from hers. “Well, she’s very good at what she does. But sort of protective about her perps. It’s my fault, really, I should have told you that she’s been after him for a while. Did you get anything out of him?”

Aveline shook her head dispiritedly. “Nothing but lyrium dealing, which right now I don’t care about. I got a reaction when I showed him this, though.” She pulled the coffee-stained picture of Castillon out. “He wouldn’t own up, but I’m sure there’s a connection there. If I had the chance to read him this other file…” she trailed off as the realization hit her, fingers dancing through the folder for papers that weren’t there. “My file.”

Donnic had a rather guilty look on his face. She rounded on him. “That woman stole my file, didn’t she?”

“Well…it’s certainly _conceivable_ …” He stopped at the look on her face, and his shoulders dropped. “The Hanged Man. It’s a bit of a dive…”

But the last words were lost on Aveline as she stormed out of the precinct with a twenty in hand and a mission to find the nearest cab she could take to the Hanged Man.


	4. Partners Not Friends

Isabela stretched out luxuriously, hooking her toes over the edge of the table and pulling so she felt every vertebra pop. “Oooh.”

Varric glanced up at her from across the bar, where he was busy jotting up totals with a calculator and a pen. “Rivaini, didn’t I say something about your habit of lying all over my tables?”

She grinned at him and rolled over so her back arched up. The pose was practically obscene. “That it’s good for business?”

He laughed, a touch reluctantly. “It’s not the Rose, darlin’.”

“Oh, I’m _very_ familiar with the Rose,” she purred, rolling back on her stomach again. She frowned at the file she’d lifted from the interrogation room. It was laughably easy, really; if that was the best Captain Bran could bring in, he’d have done better to put her in charge of the investigation from the start.

But Castillon! If she had only known… She shut down the thought. It was all water under the bridge, and right now she had a job; find that greasy slaver before he ruined more lives. Once, she might have known where to find him, but now she was working from the same blank slate as the tight-laced cop from Denerim.

She was so absorbed in the file that she didn’t look up when the front door opened, didn’t look up at the footsteps coming across the room, didn’t look up until a tall shadow fell over her and a voice said “Hand that over. Now.”

Isabela let her gaze trail slowly over all six feet of the woman in front of her, starting at the shoes (drab brown, practically screaming utility over style) moving to the no-nonsense business suit (did this woman secretly want to work in insurance or something?) and finally up to Vallen’s face, which was a brilliant red by the time Isabela had completed her once-over.

“Can I help you?” she parroted back.

Vallen clearly did not let embarrassment deter her. “You can. Hand that over and don’t mess up an official investigation next time.”

Isabela very deliberately tucked the file between her breasts and the table and rested her chin on her hands. “Sure, sweet thing,” she said with a smirk, noting with pleasure that the sarcastic endearment made the woman even more crimson. “Just as soon as you tell me why you’re after Castillon.”

“This investigation does _not_ concern you and…”

“Rivaini, for the Maker’s sake,” Varric called from the bar. “I’d rather not have any more cops in here than I have to.”

Isabela ignored him. “Funny, because I think it does. You messed up an interrogation that I was going to do, because _I_ had a lead on him, and now I find out that you’re here after Castillon. So what are you trying to do?”

“I’m _trying_ to make Kirkwall a safer place,” Vallen hissed, leaning down towards Isabela. “And I don’t appreciate getting stonewalled by amateurs.”

When Isabela spoke again, all traces of levity were gone from her voice. “You’ve got things very, very backwards if you think I’m an amateur, sweet thing. If you want to find Castillon, this whole battering ram act isn’t going to help you out. You don’t know anyone in Kirkwall, you don’t know anything about Kirkwall. You aren’t going to get anywhere without help.”

“You can help me out by returning that file then.” Vallen made a grab for the file, and while Isabela normally didn’t have a problem with women’s hands near her breasts, she made an exception for this uptight cop. She had Vallen’s wrist in a lock on the table before the woman could blink. Vallen froze for a minute in surprise, and then made an effort to rip her arm free. Isabela was stronger than she looked, however (and had used that fact to great effect with more perps than she could remember), and Vallen got nowhere.

“So while I’ve got you here,” Isabela said conversationally, “you can accept that you’ll get nowhere without my help, as I obviously knew about Hayder where you had no clue, and you can help _me_ out with all the information in that little file of yours. Or you can refuse, and spend weeks and months getting nowhere at all.”

“Assaulting me isn’t the best step to our _friendship,”_ the woman snarled. Isabela shrugged. “No, probably not. I’m not looking for a friend, though.”

Vallen glowered at her, motionless. Isabela had to laugh. “It’s so hard to say you need my help?”

With one massive effort, Vallen ripped free. _“You_ are helping _me_ out. Captain Bran asked me over here himself.”

“Awesome, glad you see it my way.” Isabela hopped off the table, dusting herself down with Vallen’s file, mostly to see the woman’s enraged expression. “So. Heard your first name was Aveline, mind if I call you that?”

“It’s Special Agent Vallen to you,” she snapped. Isabela nodded thoughtfully. “Right, then, Aveline. I’ve got an idea about that lyrium I caught Hayder with. Don’t happen to have it with you, do you?”

Special Agent Vallen looked like she was about to quibble over the ‘Aveline’ thing, but seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. “No, I don’t, but we can go get it. What’s your idea?”


	5. Dirty Lyrium

“Why am I not surprised that your friends are criminals?”

Isabela rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “Bethany isn’t a criminal. Well, she’s sort of grey-area, I guess. Anyway, what were you planning to do with Hayder’s lyrium? Sell it yourself?”

“Shut up,” Aveline growled. Isabela smiled and knocked on the red-painted door. The houses here were squashed so tightly together that they seemed to lean upon one another. The colorless appearance of weariness and exhaustion had seeped into everything in Lowtown. The slums in Denerim had nothing on Kirkwall’s shadier areas.

“She lives with her brother and uncle and mother in Lowtown,” Isabela had explained earlier as they retrieved the lyrium container from Evidence. “The uncle’s a good-for-nothing, but Bethany’s one of the ones with the gift that actually make some good use of it. She’s been studying lyrium for Gallows University, made some amazing breakthroughs on its properties, really.”

“And it’s illegal research. Lyrium research is very strictly controlled.” Aveline completed.

Isabela looked injured. “If it were harmful to anyone I wouldn’t let her do it. Yeah, it’s probably in the hazy area of a few bylaws, but she’s done more than most of those poncy ‘professors of magic’ at UGallows.”

Standing outside the Hawkes’ house, Aveline sincerely hoped she wouldn’t regret this lapse.

Before long, they heard footsteps inside, and the door was thrown open by an older, greying man who, upon seeing Isabela, looked like Satinalia had come early.

“Izzy, how nice to see you.” He leaned against the doorjamb and gave Isabela a very long, very lingering once-over. Isabela smiled back at him, but while there were plenty of teeth in the grin, there was no warmth.

“Gamlen, my favorite loser,” she purred at him. “How I’ve missed your rotting teeth and nice round potbelly.” She pushed past him into the house, leaving Aveline to gape after her. Gamlen scowled fiercely at Isabela’s vanishing back and went to close the door, so she picked her jaw up off the doorstep and hurried after her partner.

The house was barely better than a one-room hovel, and Aveline strongly suspected it had started out life that way. There were two bedrooms tacked on, partitioned from the main room by dirty curtains. Isabela strode across the main room, neatly dodging assorted chairs upholstered in that brown velvet peculiar to thrift stores, and pulled back the curtain on one. “Look out, here come the cops.”

Aveline heard a small shriek, and then an _Isabela!_ Isabela just laughed. “I did bring a cop, but don’t worry, she’s up to speed. Come on, Aveline,” she tossed over her shoulder, “don’t just stand around in the doorway.”

Gritting her teeth, Aveline hurried over and ducked around the curtain. Two people, a dark-haired girl who looked around twenty and a tall muscled boy looking around the same age, stared back at her with wide eyes. She waved her hand a little. “Hello?”

The boy, who was lying on a bed far too small for him, grunted something that might have been a _hello_ or more likely a _please go away now_ and hiked up the _Kirkwall Kovergirls_ he was reading. The girl was busy over a table spread with a full chemist’s kit. Aveline had seen less elaborate setups in drug labs she’d busted.

“Don’t worry, Sunshine.” Isabela stepped forwards and handed the girl the lyrium container. “This is Aveline and she’s nothing but bark, no bite at all. Aveline, this is Bethany Hawke.”

“That’s Special Agent Vallen actually,” Aveline said acidly, and reached out her hand. “Isabela says you can help us.”

Bethany looked at Aveline’s hand with some hesitation, then reached out and sort of shook it. Aveline pulled her hand back feeling slighted. “Um, I suppose.” She turned her attention to the lyrium container. “What do you want to know?”

Isabela shrugged. “Anything you can tell us would be a huge help. I busted a guy with this early today, and I suspect he’s in on something a lot bigger than just lyrium dealing. But _somebody_ here messed up in the interrogation, so now we’re on our own to get clues.”

Aveline opened her mouth to protest this traducing of her character, but Bethany cut her off. “Well, I can tell you where the lyrium was mined, and how they processed it. Would that help?”

“Are processing techniques so different?”

“If gangs were smart, they’d standardize them.” Bethany turned back to her chemistry setup. “But since they’re all doing it illegally, each method is slightly different. I don’t know which gang uses which, though. You’re on your own for that.”

“It’s more than we had a minute ago,” Aveline said. “How long will it take?”

“Come back in a day.” Bethany already had the focused look of a scientist challenging a problem. “I’ll have to run a few chemical analyses on the sample, and confirm the results.” She rummaged around in a purse sitting on her bed, and pulled out an honest-to-Maker pipette. The lyrium sample was already weighed and being carefully mixed into a reagent as Isabela and Aveline were leaving.

“She seems…nice,” Aveline said once they were outside.

“Sunshine cares about her work and her family.” Isabela took the lead back to the Hanged Man. “Sometimes more than she cares about herself.”

 

They retrieved the lyrium sample from Bethany the next morning, along with a short write-up of her procedure and results. When Aveline protested that she couldn’t hand in documentation of illegal experimentation, Bethany pointed out that no one could recreate her experiment without a detailed methodology, and if Aveline wanted the results she’d damn well better have the experiment as well. Once they had that little wrinkle sorted out, the two took the lyrium to the precinct.

Donnic glanced up as they entered, and his weary face took on new animation. “Good morning, Vallen, Rivaini. Coffee?”

“Black, love,” Isabela said, pushing aside a stack of papers on her desk and plopping down on the polished wood. “Aveline’s got something she wants to show you.”

Aveline pulled out the lyrium sample, wondering why everything that Isabela said sounded like some form of innuendo. “Rivaini had some tests run on this sample, and we have the processing method used to refine it. Do you have any data on how the gangs around here like to process their lyrium?”

Donnic poured Isabela a cup of coffee and handed it to her. “We have a database on lyrium seizures and any information we’ve gathered related to them. I’m not sure if we have that exact information, but it’s a start. Would you like some coffee?”

Aveline would really have liked the data, but she nodded anyway. He smiled equably and poured her a cup, passing it to her so their fingers brushed. She curled hers around the cup instinctively. “The database?”

“Give him a minute, Aveline.” Isabela stretched out languidly on the desk. “It’s an ungodly hour in the morning.”

“It’s all right.” Donnic pulled himself up to his computer and began tapping at the keyboard. “So you want lyrium processing methods. Hmm…let’s see.” He hummed to himself as he scrolled through the data. “Oh, looks like we have some data on it. How did you get that, anyway? We have people here who’d do that.”

Aveline immediately shot a death glare at Isabela, who did an excellent job of pretending not to see it. “Oh, Hendyr, you know how long they take. They’ve got a backlog of samples a mile long.”

“That’s fancy talk for ‘mind your own business’.” Donnic looked mildly suspicious, but then seemed to decide it didn’t matter. “Do you have the results here?”

Aveline placed them in front of him, palming the paper that had the experimental methods. It may have been true that there was a backlog of samples in the precinct, but that didn’t make Isabela’s unorthodox methods right, and she resolved to kick her ass as soon as they were out of the precinct.

Donnic glanced down the results, and typed in a few keywords. “Hmm. Looks like you’re lucky today. This refining method has been linked several times over to Velasco.”

Isabela landed catlike on her feet, all languid posing forgotten. “Velasco?”

“Yep.”

“The one who owns the Rose?”

“Yep.” Donnic spun around his chair. “Likes to pretend he’s legitimate and clean, but we’ve seized more lyrium at the Rose and coming from the Rose than at UGallows. Everybody knows he’s dirty, but since he keeps his hands clean we’ve only been able to arrest his lackeys. Nobody will rat on him, which I’ve always thought is surprising loyalty for just a lyrium smuggling operation. But if he’s in with slavers…”

“They’d all be too scared to rat on him. It would be too serious,” Aveline finished for him, feeling her pulse speed up. She glanced at Isabela, who likewise seemed energized, her brown eyes sparking. “Looks like your instincts were right after all, Rivaini.”

Aveline thought Isabela looked genuinely pleased for a second, but then her eyes were veiled in her customary half-laughing, half-mocking persona. “How nice of you to say so, sweet thing.” Isabela pushed past her, grabbing keys off of a key rack near the coffee machine. “Velasco knows my car. I’m going to borrow that SUV you’re so fond of, Hendyr, hope you don’t mind.”

Donnic threw up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender. “Fine, just don’t get into any car chases and chip the paint.” He paused for a moment, then added “Unless you really need to.”


	6. The Stripper Cops

After wrangling it through with Captain Bran and then with the legal department, Isabela and Aveline had a bug to plant on Velasco’s cell phone, and Isabela dropped Aveline off at her apartment, promising to get her later to go to the Blooming Rose. While Isabela was somewhat tempted to leave Aveline at home and do this herself since the woman would stick out like a qunari in a room full of dwarves, she needed someone Velasco wouldn’t recognize on sight. They might pretend to be friendly whenever Isabela visited the Rose, but she had no illusions that Velasco wasn’t actually itching to put a bullet in her skull.

Once she dressed – and promised Varric that she would come home safe and wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks, with her fingers crossed behind her back – Isabela swung by Aveline’s apartment. They were a bit early; the Rose wouldn’t get very full till later, but it would give them time to scope out the building and plan their approach to Velasco. Aveline looked stunned at Isabela’s outfit as she climbed into the SUV.

“What in the Maker’s name are you wearing?”

Isabela flexed her booted foot on the gas pedal, swerving out of the neighborhood and merging into the main road for Hightown. “Like it?”

“Is that the plan?” she asked acidly. “Dress like one of the strippers and promise Velasco a lap dance in exchange for bugging his phone? Are you even wearing pants right now?”

Isabela let out a long-suffering sigh, something she was getting quite a lot of practise at with Aveline around. “It’s called camouflage. What about what you’re wearing? You look like you’re going to set up a table and do the strippers’ taxes.”

Aveline glanced down at her attire, which was the usual pantsuit. “This is…what I usually wear. It’s professionalism.”

“Right, love. Well, you’re the one who’s going to be getting to Velasco, so unless he’s secretly got a fetish for accountants, you’re going to have to get rid of that look.”

If she hadn’t been driving, Isabela would have liked to sit and bask in Aveline’s horrified look for a while. “What do you mean, I’m going to be the one getting to Velasco?”

“What, do you want it in Tevinter? Very simple: you’re. The. One. Getting. To. Velasco. He knows who I am, so if I suddenly start fawning all over him, he’s going to suspect something. I need a fresh face for this.”

_“You_ need…” Suddenly, the beginning of Isabela’s statement got through to Aveline. “Wait, how do you know Velasco?”

Isabela white-knuckled the steering wheel, pausing for a moment till she was sure her voice was perfectly steady. “It’s a long story, involves a lovely yacht and a trip back to the home country for me. Not important right now. What’s important is that Velasco and I have an agreement; he tolerates me visiting the Rose, and I leave the cop routine at home whenever I come. But if he sees me trying to bug anything, he’ll know something’s up and go to ground. So here’s what we’ll do. Drop me off a couple blocks away and I’ll walk in, meet up with some of my friends, enjoy the show. You park the SUV, come in, keep an eye out for Velasco. Usually once he gets a few drinks in, he’ll come onto the floor and start enjoying the show himself. Get close, grab the phone, plant the bug, and get out. I’ll be waiting where you dropped me off.”

Aveline nodded, her jaw set. Isabela had to admire the steely look in her eyes; maybe Aveline would be able to pull this off after all. “Where will you be while I’m planting the bug?”

“I’ll be watching. With any luck I’ll be able to draw off some of his bodyguards, make it easier on you.”

“Right.”

Isabela pulled over beside Bodahn’s Shop of Curiosities and turned to Aveline. “First though, take off that damn jacket. And unbutton your shirt.”

Aveline’s fingers went to her throat. “But…it’s supposed to be a collar.”

Isabela rolled her eyes. “Did I ask? Untuck it too. You think you’re going to run into Velasco in a _strip_ club and he’s not going to think something’s off? These guys are all wise to the cops.” She lost patience and went for Aveline’s shirt, unfazed by the other woman’s squawks of protest. “I should have come by earlier,” she muttered. “Brought you some of my stuff.”

“There, stop, _stop!”_ Isabela received a smack to the side of her head that quite hurt, actually. “It’s unbuttoned! We’re finished!”

“There’s two buttons undone!” Isabela threw up her hands. “Fine. If you think you can make it work.”

“I’ve been catching criminals since before you were a cop,” Aveline threw back at her. “I can make this work.”

Isabela slammed the car door on her way out. The night air was brisk on her bare thighs, but it helped cool her temper. And it felt good, being back in her old clothes. She knew why she’d left her old life behind and most of the time she didn’t regret it, but there were always those days.

While the Rose had a lineup already, Isabela was friends with the bouncers, and she slipped past, hoping that Aveline was savvy enough to avoid a lineup. The Blooming Rose was a lovely old building, and even if Velasco was a son of a bitch, he knew how to decorate. It must be expensive to keep the plush carpet clean of all the sticky spilled alcohol, but it was worth it. For the residents of Hightown, the Rose was the closest they got to the decadence of Orlais, and Maker’s balls, were they willing to pay for it.

She made a beeline straight for the bar, and ordered a whiskey. A light touch on the small of her back startled her, but then a husky voice in her ear said “Bela, you never come to see me anymore.”

“Aww, Anders.” Forgetting the whiskey, she threw her arms around him affectionately. Anders was a Ferelden expat, working at (or rather, running) the left-wing rag _The Manifesto_ by day, and dancing at the Rose by night. She liked him better for it; most of the politicians she knew were the type to rather visit the Rose and tip measly amounts to the dancers. He grinned back at her and kissed the tip of her nose. “You’re too good to slum it up now?”

“Anders, honey, this isn’t slumming. Where _I_ live is slumming. You know I come as often as I can.”

“So what’s the big occasion this time?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry to say Serendipity’s working a private party tonight.”

“Damn.” She put a hand to her heart. “Unlucky again. But that’s not why I’m here, actually. Is Velasco here tonight?”

“Of course.” He jerked a thumb at the VIP section. “Why?”

“I have a friend who’s going to be paying him a visit,” she said carefully. Anders looked at her wide-eyed. “Umm…Isabela?”

“Hey.” She put a hand on his chest. “It’s important, okay? I promise we’re gonna be careful, but we can’t let him slip away.”

Anders took a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay. Who’s the friend?”

“Red hair, built like a freight train. She’s from Denerim and she’s wearing a suit.”

“And you didn’t…try to stop that?”

She shrugged. “I did. She wasn’t having it.”

“Right.” Anders looked over again. “I’m going on in a minute. Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’ll do what I can without losing my job.”

She smiled. “What did I do to get friends like you?”

“That trick with your tongue, probably. I’ll see you in a bit.”

They had to wait a lot longer than Isabela thought they would, because as it turned out Aveline wasn’t savvy enough to skip the line. After several irate messages on her phone ( **‘Lineup is long. I’ll be in as fast as I can.’ ‘Why do people wait for hours to get in? This place can’t be that good.’ ‘Isn’t there some sort of law about this?’** ) Isabela finally spotted Aveline walking in, with her jaw somewhere around her knees and her eyes wide as saucers.

“Maker,” Isabela groaned, and motioned for another drink.

It was clear after not too long that Aveline’s attire wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She was getting a lot of attention, but Velasco sure wasn’t looking, and it wasn’t the sort of attention that she needed. Isabela pulled out her phone and tapped out a message to Anders. **redhead in suit. take her backstage. get her out of that shitty suit**.

A quick text to Aveline and while she looked suspicious as Anders approached her, she went off with him to the dancers’ dressing room. Isabela swallowed another gulp of whiskey to steel her nerves. She kept an eye on Velasco in the VIP section; while he was drinking and had a couple of strippers on his lap, he obviously wasn’t sloshed enough yet to come out and mingle with the commoners. He turned his head with a smarmy laugh at something one of the strippers had said, and spotted her. His eyes narrowed, and he raised an eyebrow. _You gonna cause trouble?_ that look said.

_You have no idea_. She winked at him and raised her glass in a mock toast. _Just here for the dancers_ , she mouthed.

He obviously trusted her about as far as he could throw her, which given that he was a scrawny thing wasn’t much, because one of his bodyguards made his way down towards her. “I’m watching you,” he grunted, leaning against the bar in what she was sure he thought was a very suave way.

“Hope you like what you see,” she said cheerily, turning back to the main stage. Either Serendipity’s private party was later or it was already through, because the elf was up on the pole. She caught her eye and winked, blowing Isabela a kiss. Isabela blew one back, leaning forwards just a bit for the benefit of the bodyguard.

A blur of red and blue caught her eye, and she glanced sideways to see Anders and Aveline emerge from backstage. She choked down a laugh and focused back on Serendipity, silently thanking Anders. The woman was outfitted in a naughty cop costume, complete with handcuffs dangling from her belt and a cap set at a jaunty angle on her red hair. Evidently, they had decided the best refuge was in audacity. And Aveline really did look good in blue.

Anders whispered something in Aveline’s ear, pushing her gently towards one of the lower stages. She looked horribly awkward, holding herself so stiffly that Isabela could see her shivering from her spot at the bar. She whipped out her phone. **take a shot or something. you look like a grandmother**.

Aveline waited a while before she read the text, either because she didn’t feel a vibration or because she didn’t want it to look suspicious. When she did read it, Isabela saw her shoulders go back, and although she couldn’t see her face, she suspected that the Stubborn Aveline Look was firmly in place. Isabela’s phone buzzed with a text, but she didn’t even have to read it to know what Aveline was saying. She filed the information away: best way to get Aveline to do something is to tell her she’s doing it badly.

While Aveline strutted, or at least made a valiant effort to, on the side stages, Isabela kept an eye on Velasco. She also kept an eye on Serendipity, partly for the benefit of her lecherous bodyguard and partly just for her. Finally, Velasco tipped about three dancers out of his lap and weaved down to the main stage, toasting the strippers. Anders, who was up on stage, cast an anxious glance at Isabela. She tapped out a quick text to Aveline: **go now. grab his dick or something**.

Aveline didn’t even check the text – she zeroed in on Velasco with painful intensity. Isabela watched her approach the couch that Velasco was splayed out on. The bodyguards stopped her before she got too close. Aveline tried a flirtatious smile, twisting her hair around her finger and tilting her shoulders. Isabela winced; it was textbook the-most-I-know-about-flirting-is-from- _Cosmo_. But for some reason, Velasco sat up, almost spilling his drink, an almost-predatory smile spreading across his face. Perhaps it was that Aveline was so different from the other dancers; six feet tall and nothing but muscle. She batted her eyelashes at the bodyguard and slid past him, leaning over far enough that Isabela got a very clear view. Velasco pulled her down on the couch, and Aveline settled down awkwardly, obviously trying to show off as much skin as possible, and also get near to his back pocket where both she and Isabela could see the glint of Velasco’s phone.

It soon became clear that Aveline wasn’t going to get anywhere near it. She kept wriggling backwards on the couch, but as soon as she did, Velasco turned so he was facing her again. She smiled and simpered and eventually shifted onto his lap, but he was pressed back far enough into the cushions that she wasn’t able to reach the phone without being too obvious about it.

Fuck it, Isabela decided. It was time for some direct action.

She slugged back the rest of her whiskey and ordered another, hitting it back hard. Deliberately, she let the glass fall on the soft carpet, cackling “Oh, whoops!” and diving after it. The bodyguard reacted a little slowly, too busy staring at all the cleavage she’d flashed when she went down for the glass. She glanced up at him with the glass in hand, her nose close enough to his jeans that she could stick her tongue out and brush against them. “Clumsy me!”

“Eh…it’s okay.” Velasco’s goon forgot to keep his tongue in his mouth. As she rose, she stumbled against him, shoving her breasts into his chest. “Aww, I’m drunk!” she slurred. “Gonna go dance!”

“Huh?” She was halfway across the room before the bodyguard registered her disappearance. Anders looked alarmed as she bounded onto stage, but Serendipity smiled at her and reached out a hand to pull her up. “Hey, Bela. Just couldn’t resist me, huh?”

Isabela grabbed her and gave her a sloppy kiss, hoping that Velasco was noticing her bad behavior. If he’d just lean forwards…she pulled away from Serendipity, who gave her a lazy, amused look, and grabbed one of the poles. Good thing she’d come dressed for the occasion. She rubbed against the pole, the laces of her blouse coming loose. Even better. Serendipity noticed, too. “Isabela, you’re drunk.”

Isabela hooked a booted leg around the pole, swinging around slowly to come face-to-face with her. “Guilty.” She leaned in for another kiss with Serendipity, and out of the corner of her eye, saw Velasco definitely leaning forwards. In fact, he was on his feet, pointing at her and yelling at her gormless bodyguard, who had taken the watching part of his job so seriously that he clearly hadn’t remembered the second part to it. Aveline was on the couch, doing a good job of looking mildly surprised and titillated, but from the half-smirk she wore, Isabela knew that the bug was safely in Velasco’s phone. That success carried her through the embarrassing ordeal of getting thrown out of the strip club, but getting thrown out of clubs was not an uncommon occurrence for her, so it didn’t bother her unduly.

At the corner, Isabela hugged herself through the thin silk of her blouse. She wasn’t coming…Velasco had realized she was with Isabela and had dragged her back to the panic room. She was in an alleyway somewhere, a bullet wound in her forehead. She had decided to leave Isabela and take the glory for herself. Isabela was this close to hailing a cab when the SUV peeled around the corner.

“Took you long enough.” Isabela hopped in, noticing with amusement that Aveline was still in the naughty cop outfit, although she’d taken off the hat. “Anders didn’t get your clothes back?”

“No. You owe me a new suit.” But Aveline was smiling. “That went a lot better than I was afraid it would.”

Isabela decided to take pity on her. “You did good. Once you got over wearing the stripper outfit.”

“Your friend’s idea…” Aveline trailed off as bright lights glinted in their rearview mirror. “Oh, shit.”

Isabela looked over her shoulder. A van was trailing behind them, its high beams switched on so Isabela couldn’t see who was driving. “Damn it,” she swore. “I knew it went too smoothly.” She reached into her bra and pulled out the small revolver she kept strapped to her chest. Aveline flickered a glance at her. “Really? In your bra?”

“Drive the car.” Isabela unsnapped her belt and climbed into the backseat. “Can you lose them?”

“Of course,” she said curtly, and stepped on the accelerator. The car sped through the Hightown maze of neighborhoods, weaving around cars full of spoiled Hightown teenagers. The van kept pace, though, and Aveline was hissing a steady stream of Fereldan curses through her teeth. Eventually, Isabela climbed back into the front seat. “Right, that’s enough of a Fereldan driving demo. Move over.”

“What do you think -” Aveline was cut off as Isabela stomped on the brake, bracing herself against the deceleration. “Get out!”

Aveline threw the door open, pulling the SUV’s back passenger door open for cover. “Police! Hands on your head!” Isabela flung herself out the other side, raising her revolver. “Police!... _Jeven?_ ”

The greying man had his own gun leveled at her head. “Rivaini?”

Aveline looked at her disbelievingly. “You know them?”

“That’s Jeven, from the lyrium control task force.” Isabela lowered her gun. “What the hell were you doing trailing us?”

The man across from Aveline, whom Isabela vaguely remembered as Martin, lowered his own gun. “What the hell were _you_ doing in the Rose? You almost blew our cover.”

“Your cover?” Aveline was still standing behind the door, but Isabela was pretty sure she was doing it now to hide the naughty cop outfit rather than to shield herself from gunfire. “Just who are you?”

“We’ve been staking that place out for _months_ now.” Jeven walked around the car, slamming the SUV’s passenger door. Aveline flinched back. “We’re setting up a sting op on Velasco and his lyrium dealing. And then you two come waltzing in and nearly blow everything. Nice outfit, by the way. Is that how they dress women in the force nowadays?”

Isabela was very tempted to take out her revolver again. Aveline was still pressed against the SUV, her body hunched inwards under Jeven’s critical stare. “Excuse me?” Isabela said loudly, walking around the car to the two of them. “Are you giving beauty tips? Do you own a mirror?”

“Oh, catty.” Jeven glared at her. “Listen up. We’re not gonna let you two take all the credit here. What was that back there anyway? Sitting in the bad guy’s lap? Maybe if you _lady_ cops worked a little harder at your jobs and less at lap dances, you’d get further ahead.”

“Yeah?” Isabela glared back. “What’s _your_ version of stakeout? Go to the adult store and buy some pornos to watch in your pedo-van?”

“Hey -” Jeven took a step towards her, which was the cue for Martin to grab Jeven’s arm. “Look, we’ve got this covered. Don’t get involved.”

“We’re not after your lyrium bust,” Aveline said. “We’re on a different investigation. We don’t need to be enemies here.”

“Couldn’t we be at least a _little_ bit enemies?” Isabela asked, enjoying the dark red flush that came over Jeven’s face. “Yeah, listen to your stripper friend,” he spat at Aveline.

Isabela reached her hand down her shirt, and pulled it back out curled into a middle finger, her mouth in a surprised O. Jeven spluttered with rage, which Isabela took advantage of. _Always want the last word_. “Come on, Vallen, we’ve done a good day’s work. Time to leave these guys to their loser cruiser.”

Aveline clambered back into the SUV, slamming the door in Jeven’s face. Isabela buckled herself in. “Do you know anything about those two?” Aveline asked as they merged onto the intercity.

Isabela shrugged. “I know Jeven by reputation mostly, seen the other guy Martin a few times around the precinct. Jeven’s an asshole, Martin’s one of those guys who likes to blame his actions on other people. They deserve each other.”

Aveline shook her head darkly. “Well, we won’t be back there till we arrest Velasco. Right under their noses.”


	7. Elvhen Hackers

With the bug in place, their next step was using it to trace the phones that Velasco called. Of course, within the precinct there was a department of computer whizzes sitting on their well-trained behinds just waiting for the chance to show off their skills. Donnic suggested several of them to Isabela, who shook her head at them all.

“I know all of them and I know a better one,” she declared, pulling out her phone and scrolling through numbers.

Donnic tapped on his desk for attention. “That’s nice, but until further notice this is still a classified investigation. We can’t risk any of the info getting outside and reaching Velasco’s ears. Or worse, Larkin’s ears.”

Isabela shrugged. “Sure, but this one is way better than the rest. She can get us into the phones. If I were Castillon, I wouldn’t meet up with Velasco anywhere. Knowing where Velasco’s phone is doesn’t do us a fat lot of good.”

“Isabela…” Donnic crossed his arms. Aveline crossed hers as well in unconscious imitation. The work Bethany did had been helpful, but she concurred with Donnic; classified investigations were supposed to stay classified, and they didn’t stay classified for very long if someone insisted on yanking every so-called expert off the street to help.

Isabela glanced up at both of their stern faces. “Wow, doesn’t anyone smile around here? You two should never have kids, you’d have little stone-faced golems running round the place. Fine, we’ll do it your way.” She pushed between them and went off to the intelligence department with the bug’s information, leaving Aveline staring awkwardly at anything that wasn’t Donnic’s face. “I should…go catch up with her,” she offered, and hurried after Isabela, face burning red.

 

With the intelligence department monitoring the bug and promising very frequent status updates, Aveline went home for the afternoon, planning on running through the information they had already collated and seeing if she could make any useful links. She liked taking a whiteboard and covering it with the key points she knew; sometimes the spiderweb pattern revealed new links that she’d never considered before.

Or at least, that was what she was planning on doing, and was in the middle of glowering at a paper with a big question mark written on it tacked up over the name “Larkin”, when her phone rang. She flipped it open. “Vallen.”

“Aveline!” Isabela sounded genuinely delighted. “I didn’t know that you’d be answering your phone in the middle of your big important deliberations.”

Aveline wished she hadn’t told Isabela her evening plans. “Yes? Is it something important?”

“Vital,” Isabela promised. “Come to the Hanged Man.”

“You want me to come to the _bar?_ Is this really important?”

“If it loosens you up, then yes, it’s very important. But as it happens, I’ve got someone I want you to meet. So hop in your fancy rental and get down here.” The phone went dead, but Aveline was halfway through a snappy comeback before she realized it.

_Oh well_. It wasn’t like she’d been making any key realizations. She threw her bag over her shoulder and went out to the car. The Hanged Man was a fair distance past the steep downhill road that marked the beginning of what the locals called “Lowtown”. By the time she got there, it was twilight and there was already a crowd of rowdy-looking drunks hanging around the bar’s doors. Itching to slap some cuffs on them and throw them all in the drunk tank, Aveline resisted the urge (this wasn’t her jurisdiction, anyway) and walked through them into the bar, where Isabela waved her over from the bar. A blond dwarf with his shirt open to an indecent extent – Aveline vaguely recalled his name was Varric –was behind the bar pouring drinks for two elves that were sitting with her. Isabela passed her a drink as she sat down, which she sniffed and decided not to touch. “So, what’s this about?”

“Remember the hacker I said was better than anyone in the precinct?”

“They’re called intelligence officers in the precinct, not _hackers,_ and yes I do.”

Isabela beamed. “Meet Merrill.”

The dark-haired elf beside her waved excitedly at Aveline. “Oh, it’s so nice to meet you! Isabela said you were so tall and strong that you could probably arm-wrestle Fenris here and win!”

Aveline didn’t even know where to start with that. Isabela rescued her, inasmuch as Isabela rescued people. “Kitten can get into any computer or phone you need her to.” She held up her hands to pre-empt Aveline, who had opened her mouth to ask if _classified_ meant something else to Isabela than it did to her. “I know, I know, officially not supposed to be asking anyone outside the precinct for help. So this is unofficial!”

“That’s not how the rules work, Rivaini,” Aveline said acidly. Merrill shook her head vigorously, dark braids flying. “Don’t worry, Aveline! I know that Isabela does dangerous work. I wouldn’t put her in danger, or you either.” The elf whipped out a phone, or at least it looked like a phone, from her green pleather purse and started tapping away on it. “Isabela didn’t tell me much of course, just what you need to get about Velasco and his friends.”

“Wait…isn’t the bug…”

“With our intelligence department,” Isabela finished. “I said she was a good hacker.”

Aveline scrutinized the tiny elf in front of her: traditional tattoos (vallaslin or something like that?) scrolling across high cheekbones, wide green eyes so innocent that they could have belonged to Andraste, a teensy daisy-printed dress with a matching floral scarf…and she was merrily hacking into the Kirkwall police network. She wasn’t sure whether she was horrified or impressed. Every law enforcement rule she had memorized told her she ought to snatch that phone, clap the elf in handcuffs, and open an investigation of the police network’s security. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to wait, see what Merrill came up with.

Instinct eventually won. Aveline sat back, pretended to sip at her drink. “If this goes sideways, Rivaini…”

“It’s my ass,” Isabela completed. “Relax a bit, Aveline. Have a shot. Bran’s been putting up with me for years.”

“How many years?” Aveline asked, momentarily diverted. She had of course tried to pull Isabela’s file from Donnic, but Donnic, usually forthcoming and open with her, had clammed up. No amount of threatening or cajoling had resulted in Isabela’s file on her desk. The secrecy surrounding her partner’s history was interesting to her.

“Why? Do you see a wrinkle?” Isabela grabbed dramatically at the bartender as he went by. “Varric! You know I love you! Tell me truthfully, are there wrinkles?”

Aveline shook her head ruefully. “Fine. Tell me something else instead. How about you introduce me to him?” She gestured towards the white-haired elf seated on the other side of Isabela.

He introduced himself instead. “Fenris,” he said enigmatically, leaning over Isabela and offering his hand. Aveline shook it. “Aveline Vallen.” He had a deep, growly voice, and where Merrill had vallaslin, he had thick white ink tattoos crisscrossing around his forearms and wrist, disappearing into the neck of his shirt from the tip of his chin.

“So are you a hacker too?” she asked.

He chuckled. “In a manner of speaking, perhaps.”

Isabela glanced at Aveline, and in that brief glance, she read a serious question. Isabela sat back, leaving her glass on the bar. Aveline sat up a bit straighter. If Isabela was setting her drink aside, this was important. Fenris shifted uncomfortably, and Aveline noticed the tension coiling in his muscles. Merrill was busy working on her phone, elbows firmly planted on the table, and quite oblivious to the sudden tension between her three companions.

“It’s not just Merrill I wanted to introduce you to,” Isabela said finally. “You’re a pain in the ass, Aveline, but I trust you not to be working with them. You’ve invested too much into this.”

“Are you sure you can trust me?” Aveline asked quietly. She knew that she wasn’t a sneak, but at the same time, she wanted to be sure that Isabela didn’t throw out dangerous secrets willy-nilly. The involvement of so many others in this case worried her. But the casual attitude that Isabela so often adopted hid, Aveline thought, a serious soul. A soul that wouldn’t jeopardize an investigation, because she knew how much was riding on it.

“Yeah. For some strange, fucked-up reason, I’m sure I can.” Isabela turned to Fenris. “Fenris is an ex-slave. From Tevinter. Now he lives here, does some odd jobs around Kirkwall. Sometimes, if he has a good opportunity, he does odd jobs for the slaving rings here.”

Aveline clenched her fist so hard around the beer mug’s handle that she felt the bones in her fingers shift.

“And if he notices anything on those odd jobs, he passes that on to me.” Isabela looked down at her hands, curled in her lap. “So now you know, and if you wanted to destroy me or him, you could. But he knows a bit about Larkin’s ring, so I thought you should know. In case something happens to me, he’d still have a contact to help bring them down. He doesn’t trust the cops, so he doesn’t inform for them, but he trusts me.”

Aveline had a million questions, and most of them centred around some variant of _where’s Larkin_ or _who’s Larkin_ or _how did Isabela ever get you to trust her with something this dangerous_ but it was interrupted by Merrill’s loud, triumphant “Ha!” She swung her legs on the barstool in what Aveline could only describe as some kind of midair jig. “Got access!”

Isabela, with a look of relief that the conversation had changed, peered over Merrill’s shoulder. “To what, Kitten?”

Fenris also peered over, giving Aveline a chance to look at him. The tension in his shoulders had eased, but…Maker. To imagine what he’d gone through as an escaped slave – Aveline knew about underground movements that helped slaves escape from Tevinter or slaver caravans en route, and she knew they were mostly dirty and dangerous and sometimes hardly better than the fate they’d freed slaves from. No wonder the man hated slavers enough to do something as dangerous as infiltrate their ranks and inform on them. People like Castillon and Larkin had dragged him into a world that most people only knew as sad stories on page A8 of _Denerim Daily_ or as torture porn in ‘gritty, realistic dramas’ on television, and made sure that he could never fully leave that behind. She recognized the white ink tattoos as something that Tevinters frequently marked slaves with; usually denoting the magister’s estate that the slave belonged to, and a clear indicator that Fenris could never be ‘normal’ no matter how far he fled from Tevinter.

With renewed purpose, Aveline clenched her fists and looked over at Merrill’s tiny screen. The elf was excitedly telling Isabela that she had hacked into Castillon’s phone. “I’m pulling data from it right now. He probably doesn’t call your Larkin directly, I certainly wouldn’t and I’m not even a criminal.” She glanced up with her lovely green eyes into Aveline’s direct gaze and blushed. “Well, not a really bad one. Anyway, he’s very silly and has a lot of apps that save a lot of information on his phone. Like this one…” She scrolled through the data and her wide eyes widened even further. “Oh. If you want to know his favorite porn sites I could tell you.”

Isabela snatched at the phone. “Of course I do.” She scrolled down and let out a whoop of laughter. “I could burn his ass with that one! Or wait, this is even better…”

Aveline cleared her throat.

“Ahem.” Isabela handed the phone back to Merrill. “I think maybe something that could give us his location would be even better.”

“It’s GPS’d.” Merrill worked away in silence for a few more minutes and then looked up again. “I just emailed you a list of places he’s been the last few days. Or where his phone’s been. I suppose he really likes Fereldan food because he keeps going back to Lirene’s. I love her blackberry tarts. Do you think we’ve ever been in there at the same time?”

Isabela’s phone dinged as she received the email, and she scanned through it with purpose. “I don’t know, Kitten, but what I do know is that I owe you as many blackberry tarts as you can eat, because this is perfect. Aveline, there’s a warehouse down in the docks that he keeps visiting at regular hours. Ready to check that out tomorrow?”

Aveline curled her fingers around the mug’s handle like she’d hold a gun. “Is that a question?”


	8. Asking Nicely

At first Aveline had wanted to let Bran know where they were going, and by default the entire precinct. But Isabela had shot that down, and for once Aveline had to agree she was talking sense. It was an unconfirmed lead, and the entire Kirkwall police department coming down on the warehouse would be hard to hide. If he wasn’t there and a dozen of Kirkwall’s finest stormed the warehouse, he’d know that someone was bugged and would change his phone and routine. Instead, Aveline decided they ought to inform Donnic, just to make sure someone knew where to look for the bodies if it went wrong, and Isabela agreed.

Donnic had been somewhat less than pleased that they were putting themselves into harm’s way with no backup, and had insisted on having a squad ready if they called for backup (although he did promise that the backup squad wouldn’t know what they were on call for). He made Aveline promise that she’d bring back Isabela safely and come back safely herself, and Aveline walked away wondering what it was about that intense gaze that had made her suspiciously willing to promise anything. Deciding to switch it up, they took Aveline’s rental to the warehouse, and went in plainclothes. Isabela pointed out that Aveline’s idea of plainclothes amounted to wandering around the docks looking like an accountant, and Aveline pointed out that in a few minutes they would either be dead or have Castillon, regardless of how many pantsuits she wore.

Getting out of the car, Isabela moved like mercury, slipping from the car into the shadows along the warehouse so fast that Aveline, who had been watching her, took another second to locate her in the darkness. They crept along the side and through an open side door, finding themselves among stacks of secondhand furniture. Aveline scouted along the walls while Isabela covered her, finally signalling ‘nothing’ to her partner. Her heart was beating so loud that she could hear the sluggish sound of blood in her ears. Given his patterns from the last week or so that Merrill had retrieved, he should have been in here around 11 and stayed for a couple of hours at least. Had he gotten suspicious? Did Velasco find the bug?

Suddenly there was a crash above them, and Isabela swung her revolver up to the ceiling. “Upstairs?” she mouthed at Aveline, who nodded in response and pointed towards the staircase in the corner. “Cover me,” she whispered. Once she was near the staircase, she could hear the sound of raised voices from the second floor. They crept up the staircase, guns held out at the ready. Aveline checked on Isabela behind her; the woman had her lips pressed together tightly, but her trigger finger was steady. The voices seemed to be coming from a room to the right of the staircase as they emerged. As she pressed herself against the wall and inched closer to the room, she could see the backs of two people; she leaned out a little and saw a man tied up in a chair before them. She couldn’t be sure, but from the back of his head, she thought one of the two of them was Castillon. She beckoned to Isabela. “Lucky?” she breathed into her ear.

Isabela stiffened at the sight. Without taking her eyes off of the men, she nodded.

“So how did the Tevinter buyer get such a cheap deal on those slaves?” Castillon was asking. He turned to the side and Aveline and Isabela threw themselves back against the wall, barely breathing, but he wasn’t coming to the door. Instead, he started to pace. “I don’t remember authorizing anyone to give a discount. We’re not Air Kirkwall, no frequent flyer bargains.”

The man in the chair was sweating; Aveline could see it from here, and she knew what was going to happen a split second before it did. The man was halfway through a shaky explanation – _some of them were kids, some of them were sick, he wouldn’t pay full price, I’d never cheat you_ – when Castillon nodded to the gunman and he put half a dozen rounds into the man. He slumped forwards, held up by the rope.

“I’m calling for backup.” Aveline pulled out her radio. “We can take these two and have the warehouse secured and Castillon in custody by nightfall.”

Isabela nodded, just in time for twin clicks right behind them. “Backup’s already here,” a voice hissed from behind them.

They spun round to find Velasco grinning at them with a gun in each hand. “Isabela, how nice. And this is your friend? She really fills out a stripper cop outfit.”

Aveline figured they were both screwed anyway, so it didn’t matter if she opened her mouth. “Is _nobody_ going to let me live that one down?”

He pushed them into the room, where Castillon turned to face them. “Isabela, you must be moving up with the cops. I don’t remember you working on slaving before this.”

“Just missed your smiling face,” Isabela gritted out.

Aveline couldn’t believe that she hadn’t known this. “Wait…you two _know_ each other?” She glared at Isabela, who kept her attention tightly focused on Castillon, not even hinting she knew that Aveline was staring at her. She willed the other woman to look, to _explain,_ to say why she was all of a sudden buddy-buddy with the slaver.

Castillon smiled. “She doesn’t like to bandy that around, does she? So how did you two end up here? There’s no way this is coincidence.”

Velasco suddenly looked thunderstruck. Although he said nothing, he checked his phone immediately. Castillon sighed like a martyr. “Bugged, isn’t it?”

Velasco threw it away like a poisonous insect and shot it twice, just for good measure. The loud report of the gun right behind Aveline made her jump, and as soon as Castillon laughed, her resolve hardened. No criminal was going to mock her on her watch.

Velasco moved in behind her. “Think you’re so good? Well, guess what?” He was probably going to say something disparaging on the topic of the stripper cop outfit, but Aveline didn’t give him a chance. As soon as she felt the heat of his breath on her shoulder, she judged he was close enough. She snapped her head back and felt his nose break with a satisfying _crunch,_ and snatched her gun from his pocket. Velasco fell back behind her, and as she heard him hit the ground Isabela went after him in a blur of motion out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t look, focusing on disabling the gunman. Two shots and he was down, Castillon going for his dropped gun. She fired a warning shot into the boards at his feet. “Pick it up and you give me a reason,” she spat.

Castillon froze, his hands slowly raised. “Rivaini,” she said, trying to keep her voice level despite the flush of victory. “Cuff him.”

 

“How long is this going to take?” Isabela had her arms folded while Aveline was trying to balance two coffees and an overstuffed file on Castillon.

“I don’t know! Maybe the day, hopefully less. I need to find out what drives him and if I can use that to manipulate him.”

“What’s the use of those man-arms if you don’t use them to beat the shit out of criminals?”

Aveline scowled at her partner. “Look, I’m serious. Please, _please_ don’t come in there and beat the shit out of him, I need him cooperative!”

Isabela shook her head. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. Go in there and convince him to be nice to you. I promise you he won’t be.”

“You _promise?_ How well do you know him, anyway? What happened?”

The other woman’s eyes slid away from Aveline’s direct gaze. “Same way I know Velasco. I haven’t always been the angelic cop you know.”

“Funny, I don’t believe I know her,” Aveline grunted, and pushed the door open. “Stay outside,” she threw over her shoulder, and turned to face Castillon, who was sitting handcuffed in a plastic interrogation chair and doing his best to look profoundly unimpressed.

“Coffee?” she asked, sliding the Styrofoam cup towards him. “I probably drink a little more coffee than I should…”

She was cut off by a hard shove on her shoulder, spilling the coffee all over the interrogation table, as Isabela bulled past her and threw something incredibly solid and heavy-looking right at Castillon’s face. His head snapped back, although to his credit, he didn’t yell. Aveline did that for him. “YOU COULDN’T HAVE WAITED TEN SECONDS? TEN SECONDS?!”

Isabela grabbed the object back off the table and threw it at his face again for good measure. Now that Aveline could see it properly, she recognized it as Donnic’s binder of information on slaver rings in Kirkwall. She wondered how Isabela had managed to get that past him.

“You heard her,” Isabela said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at the incandescent Aveline. “You got ten seconds to tell me what I want to know.”

“Ha.” Castillon was still blinking dazedly, but he managed to put a fair bit of scorn into one syllable. “You think you’ll make me talk, Bela?”

Aveline grabbed Isabela’s shoulder and pulled her around. “I asked you to stay _outside!”_ she hissed into her face.

“I need to go hard on him! I swear your touchy-feely interview skills won’t work on him.”

Aveline glowered at her, but she had a feeling that Isabela was right. Castillon was high up enough in the organization that he had a deep investment in it and wouldn’t be persuaded by Aveline’s usual tricks. If she was wrong, though, Castillon would end up fairly permanently broken, judging by Isabela’s interrogation techniques, and she would end up winging her way back to Denerim without having caught Larkin.

“Just…don’t do anything crazy,” she pleaded. “What am I going to do that’s crazy?” Isabela strolled around the table, pushing aside Aveline’s chair, till she was next to Castillon. “I’m an officer of the law. What am I going to do that’s crazy?” Suddenly, her revolver was in her hand and the audible click of the safety catch echoed. “Shoot him in the balls?”

_Oh Maker, my instincts were wrong._ “NO! You said no crazy and that is…!”

“She’s not going to do it,” Castillon said calmly. “Relax.”

“Oh sure, you want to gamble with your balls? Gamble away!”

“Turn around, I need you to pass a lie detector.” Isabela popped the six rounds into her hand and sorted through them.

“I’m not turning around!”

“Go into the corner then, if you’re feeling squeamish.”

“I’m already _in_ the corner and you are _not…”_

Isabela talked over her loudly. “Right, we’re going to play a little game of roulette. I’m going to take out all the bullets, except this one here,” she held it up in front of Castillon, “because this is my favorite. That one’s staying.” She snapped it into the chamber and lowered the gun to Castillon’s trousers. “And then you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

Castillon still looked determinedly unimpressed. His eyes traveled slowly from the revolver up Isabela’s arm to her face. “I’m going to find all your friends, and I promise you I’ll kill them one by one. Slowly.”

_Click._ Aveline shouted something incomprehensible at the sound of the blank round being fired, and Castillon jumped in shock. “That wasn’t what I asked. Round two.”

“Take the gun out of her hands, ginger!” Castillon shouted, looking a lot more impressed all of a sudden.

“Oh, _now_ you want me to save your balls?”

“I want to know where I can find Larkin.”

“I don’t know!” _Click._ “FUCK I said I don’t know! I swear to the Maker I don’t know!”

“When’s the next shipment of slaves?”

“I don’t know!” _Click._ “ALL RIGHT IT’S WEDNESDAY, I SWEAR IT’S WEDNESDAY, DON’T SHOOT MY DICK OFF, PLEASE MAKER!”

Aveline was shouting at the same time, not even sure of what she was saying, and Castillon’s panicked babble almost drowned out Isabela’s next question. “Where? Where are you shipping them from?”

“I PROMISE YOU I DON’T KNOW, I SWEAR TO MAKER I DON’T KNOW-” _Click._ “ANDRASTE’S TITS I SWEAR I DON’T KNOW WHERE, ONLY LARKIN KNOWS WHERE, HE DOESN’T TELL ANYONE TILL THE DAY OF, DON’T SHOOT MY BALLS OFF WOMAN-”

“TELL HER! JUST TELL HER!” Aveline screamed, as equally horrified as Castillon. Isabela scowled at him and pulled the trigger again. The final _click_ put Castillon right over the edge. “OH MAKER THAT’S FIVE PLEASE DON’T PULL THAT TRIGGER AGAIN PLEASE ISABELA DON’T SHOOT MY DICK-”

The door banged as Bran burst in, trailed by a very red-faced Donnic who scooped up his binder before Bran could even fully take in the scene. Aveline was screaming at Castillon to tell and Castillon switched his attention to Bran, begging Bran to take the gun out of Isabela’s hands. Bran looked from Isabela to Aveline to the panicked criminal and said just _“Outside.”_

Jeven and Martin were waiting for them outside. Isabela put her revolver back into her bra, looking remarkably cool for someone who had just held a gun to a man’s scrotum two seconds earlier. “Yes, Captain?”

“Are you _insane?”_ Jeven said before Bran could even open his mouth. “You pulled Castillon in off the street?”

“Oh, so you’re _not_ supposed to take in someone right after they shoot a man in front of you and then try to shoot you too?” Aveline took advantage of her height to loom over Jeven. “Is that customary Kirkwall protocol?”

Bran got in between them before it could get worse. “No, bringing in Castillon was the only thing you could have done in the circumstances. Threatening to shoot his balls off, however, is _not_ Kirkwall protocol. Rivaini.”

“Not like he didn’t deserve it.”

“What he deserves or not is _not_ the question at hand right now…”

Jeven talked over Bran. “Now the whole organization’s going to ground as soon as the news breaks. You didn’t just beat the grass, you took a weed whacker to it and then set it on fucking fire. Is this how women usually track someone down? You’ve _ruined_ our investigation…”

“Wait wait wait,” Isabela said. “Were you born with the talent to mangle metaphors like that?”

“This isn’t _your_ investigation,” Aveline said simultaneously. “You can go back to Velasco and track his petty lyrium deals to your heart’s content. Castillon isn’t your problem.”

Jeven opened his mouth to fire something back but Bran stepped in again. “Shut up, both of you. Vallen, Rivaini, I’m talking to both of you. Over here.”

Isabela blew a kiss over her shoulder to Jeven as they walked away; Aveline caught a glimpse of his eyes popping with rage before Bran turned to both of them with his business face.

“Look, I appreciate that you were in a rough spot and the only thing you could have done in that situation was bring in Castillon. But why didn’t you let anyone know you had a lead on him?”

“Sir, it was unconfirmed,” Aveline explained. “We weren’t going to waste anyone’s time before we knew we had some solid information. Besides, if we made too much noise and missed him, both Castillon and Larkin would know something was up. This way, with Castillon in, he might be able to give us some good info on Larkin. Rivaini already got the date of the next slave export.”

As she spoke, Aveline glanced at Isabela’s face, and she saw relief in the woman’s eyes. She realized that until she had started talking, Isabela was afraid that she might have outed Merrill and Fenris both to Bran. Her worry for her friends touched Aveline.

“Right.” Bran pinched his nose. “I just need you two to…take a rest for a bit, all right? I have to sort out all this shit with his lawyer, and if I don’t handle this right, the Viscount’s Office might decide to get involved…” He glanced at the two of them. “You’ve been doing good work, I know it. It’s just…” He shook his head and walked towards the staircase. Aveline looked after him, feeling rather as though he’d punched her in the gut. She’d never had an investigation stopped before, not even for an hour.

“Hey,” Isabela said. She touched Aveline’s arm. “If you’re not in trouble, you’re not doing your job right.”

Aveline made a noise that could have been interpreted as a grunt or a sigh. Isabela tipped her head sideways with a sympathetic smile. “Come on. We’re supposed to take a break, right? We’ll be back on it tomorrow, promise. Let’s go get a beer.”


	9. What Happens In The Hanged Man...

At the Hanged Man, Isabela only had to say a few words to Varric before there were two tall glasses of beer, ice cold, sitting on the bar before them. Isabela pushed Aveline onto a stool, rolling her eyes at the other woman’s awkwardness in a bar. “Sit down before you fall down. Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite.”

“I’m still trying to think it over,” Aveline said by way of explanation. “He said Wednesday.”

“If he said Wednesday, then there’s a slave export on Wednesday.” Isabela plopped both her elbows down on the bar and wrapped her hands around the beer glass. “Cover your ears, Varric, this is sensitive stuff. Hush-hush. We’ve got a week, we can set up people at the docks. They have to be shipping from there, and you can’t keep that many people a complete secret for long.” She took a long drink. “We’ll get them. Hey, do I have a foam mustache?”

“Puts the Paragons to shame, Rivaini,” Varric said as he passed by to serve another group.

“Right. Don’t worry about it, Aveline. We’ll get them. Enjoy that drink, it’s not free.”

Aveline picked up the beer and sniffed at it. “Um, I don’t really drink that much.”

“I know. Which is why I ordered that for you. Down the hatch.”

She watched with amusement as the redheaded woman drank down the Hanged Man’s finest, which was really just cheap swill, grimacing all the way. Once both of them had finished their drinks, she slapped down a bill. “Can we get two more drinks?” As Aveline looked away to survey the room, Isabela held up four fingers. _More,_ she mouthed.

“Oh, you just said one,” Aveline said as their shots arrived. Isabela improvised, grabbing a couple of glasses from behind the bar and splitting the shots between the two. “Oh, it’s just one more. He does this thing where he likes to put them all in little glasses, but really, that’s not even a full glass right there. We’re celebrating here; Castillon’s behind bars and we have the date for their next export.”

Five more drinks (that may or may not have been combinations of various shots) Aveline had her head down in her folded arms on the bar and Isabela was reconsidering her strategy of getting her to loosen up. “This _isn’t_ celebrating,” she moaned into her hands, somewhat muffled. “I’ve never been held up on an investigation before. And we’re so _close,_ so goddamn _close_ to finding Larkin. I’m sure Castillon knows something, if we can just get it out of him…”

Isabela tapped out a text message to Fenris. **slave deal on wed. heard anything about it?** As she put her phone away, she said “It’s just for a little bit while Bran sorts out all the bruised egos on the force. I don’t know why Jeven’s getting his panties in a knot, it’s not like Larkin cares that much about the lyrium dealing on the side in his organization. Velasco will be slumming dust in no time.”

“A little while is a lot longer than has ever happened before,” Aveline mumbled, her mind obviously still on the first part of Isabela’s remark. She shook her head and shoved another drink at the Fereldan woman. “You either need to stop drinking or drink a lot more. Look, there’s more to life than just your job.”

“I know, I know.” Aveline took the shot and grimaced as it went down. “But it means a lot to me. It’s a job that matters, you know?”

“Why else would I get into it?” Isabela slammed back her own shot. “But you gotta take the setbacks in stride. Mistakes aren’t something to flog yourself over, you learn from them.”

“It would be better if you never made them, so people didn’t have to suffer from them.”

“That sounds personal.”

“I was married for a while. But we never had much time to be together, he was always off on his job and I was off on mine.” Aveline went to take another shot and realized the shot glass was empty. Isabela quickly slid another her way, curious about the rest of the story. Aveline drank it down and continued. “He mattered a lot to me, but I guess I didn’t show it enough. The job mattered a lot to me too. One day,” her voice caught. Isabela barely breathed. “One day,” she resumed, husky, “he really needed me and I wasn’t there. Off on an investigation. By the time I heard and got to the hospital, he…he wasn’t there any more.”

“Av…” Isabela stopped herself. “Vallen, I’m so sorry.” Aveline looked up in surprise at her partner addressing her respectfully.

“Don’t expect it all the time.” Isabela reverted quickly to her lighthearted tone. Aveline nodded slowly and her head drifted back to her arms.

“Don’t fall asleep at the Hanged Man, you’ll wake up and find someone’s stolen your pants.” Isabela waved Varric down. “We need something to wake her up.”

 

Aveline slotted the last quarter into Varric’s ancient jukebox (he had a bit of a passion for antiques) and started clapping. “Everybody up!”

Isabela wasn’t quite sure what Varric had put into the last few drinks, but whatever it was seemed to have worked. She flashed him the thumbs-up, and, following a bad impulse, Isabela jumped up onto a table, using an empty beer bottle as her impromptu microphone. “ _Somebody once told me, the world is gonna roll me,”_ she screamed into the bottle, flinging her arm into the air.

“ _I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed_ ,” Aveline chimed in. She had a surprisingly rich, husky singing voice. Isabela waved her free arm in time with the music, which was enough to get some of the drunker customers joining in. “ _She was looking kinda dumb, with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead_.”

As the entire Hanged Man roared the finale “ _Only shooting stars break the mouuuuuullllldddd!”_ Isabela jumped down from the table and slammed the bottle on the bar. “Sorry, Varric, we started a frenzy.” The opening strains of Don’t Stop Believing wafted over to her, and she turned to yell at Aveline “It’s too early in the night for Journey!”

 

Isabela spread her straight flush on the table with a wide smile. “That’s it, everyone. Pants off, Aveline!”

Aveline scowled at her hand. “I swear you were cheating to get that.” The other card players applauded Isabela’s poker face, which she acknowledged with a graceful nod.

“Of course I was. Never play cards if you’re straight-laced.” She winked at Aveline. “Like some I could mention here.”

Aveline sighed theatrically, and…spread out a royal flush before her. “Sometimes playing straight pays off. Pants off, Rivaini.”

Isabela couldn’t believe her eyes. _“What?”_

 

“Spinning grapevine!” Aveline immediately tried to throw a spin into her grapevine, but tripped over her feet and went sprawling. After Isabela was done laughing (which she knew Aveline would get her back for) she leaned over and hauled Aveline to her feet, who was still saying “I don’t feel it…”

“Up you come, big girl!”

Aveline was halfway through a thank-you before the words penetrated her alcohol haze. “Wait… _big girl_?”

“Well, you’re not an elf,” Isabela said, and neatly ducked the half-hearted punch. “So what? Here’s my advice, Aveline: you know who you are. Other people will try and hurt you with words, but they don’t know you. _You_ know you. Hold onto that, and no one can hurt you.”

Aveline swayed slightly, blinking. “I’m not sure if I want to hit you or buy you a drink.” Isabela opened her mouth to vote for the latter option when Aveline threw a friendly punch at her shoulder. “So I’ll do both.”

 

Isabela often woke up on the floor, or on the tables, in the Hanged Man, but this time the hangover was blinding. She pushed herself to a sitting position on the table and the effect was immediate and overwhelming. She groaned and put her head between her knees. _I really need to quit drinking. Tomorrow. I swear I’ll quit tomorrow_.

Aveline was snoring on the table next to hers. Someone – maybe Varric, maybe some nice unknown Hanged Man customer – had spread a blanket over her. As Isabela watched, Aveline yawned, turned over, and cracked an eye. “Rivaini…ohhhh.” She cradled her head in her hands. “My _head…”_

Isabela tried to swing her legs over the table and plant them on the ground. No – the ground was swaying worse than the first boat she’d ever been sailing on. “Are you feeling as shitty as I am?”

“Worse,” Aveline moaned. “My mouth tastes disgusting.”

“You kept picking cigarettes out of people’s mouths and smoking them,” Isabela said with a flash of recall.

Aveline’s eyes widened. “Oh Maker, that’s nasty.” She tried to sit up and from the look on her face, ran into the same problem as Isabela.

Varric looked up from the tiny counter that served him as a kitchen in the corner of the bar, stretching and looking far more chipper than anyone had a right to in the morning. “Good morning, ladies.” He pulled out a bag of ground coffee beans from the cupboard and poured a generous helping into his coffeemaker. “Anybody need some caffeine?”

“You are unreservedly the best man I know,” Isabela muttered, and focused on putting her feet on the ground. Once that was mastered, she tentatively put one foot before the other. It felt like a ship in a storm, but she’d had experience with that.

“We need to get to the precinct,” Aveline said, mimicking Isabela’s cautious gait. She looked even worse for wear than Isabela did.

Varric looked slightly guilty at the words. Isabela caught it. “Varric?”

“Ummm…do you remember that you lost your car in the poker game last night?”

“I thought we were playing strip poker!” Isabela said, diving into her pocket for her car keys. They weren’t there.

“Only once you’d already lost all your stuff. Then you started betting your clothes.”

“Who did I lose it to!” she barked. Her convertible was her baby.

“Wayne.” Varric gestured out the door. “He just left. You might be able to catch him.”

Isabela raced for the door, ignoring the swaying ground. She flung the door open just in time to see Wayne, a Hanged Man regular, walking towards _her_ convertible, staggering a little bit. _Great. He’s going to crash it in two seconds flat_. “Wayne! Give me the keys back!”

“It was a poker game, Isabela, and you lost!” Wayne smirked at her. “Don’t worry, just a little joyride. You can have it back later.”

“The hell you are! I want those keys.”

Wayne ignored her threats and imprecations, unlocking the door and sliding in. She stormed towards him, turning round as Aveline came out the door after her. “We need to get to the precinct…”

The explosion flung them both back, scorching heat on Isabela’s back as she dove to the ground on top of Aveline, tucking both of their heads down. She heard a crash to her left as a chunk of the car came down beside them, but luckily they weren’t hit. As the ringing in her ears faded, Isabela rolled over and stared, open-mouthed. The car was a mangled wreck of molten metal. Wayne certainly hadn’t survived it.

“Andraste…” Aveline breathed. Isabela staggered to her feet, gasping for breath.

“My _car…”_

 

The cops brought the paramedics with them, but Isabela and Aveline hadn’t been hurt, and Wayne was beyond anything some bandages and burn gel could fix. Donnic supervised the lockdown of the area by a flurry of armed officers, overriding Varric’s protests.

Bran paced in front of them. “Castillon got out. He was being transferred to the penitentiary and the car got ambushed. We don’t know what happened to the officers driving, but I think we can guess.”

“You don’t think it’s a little obvious that we have a mole?” Isabela demanded. She pointedly stared at Jeven. _“Somebody_ had to have told them where Castillon was going to be driving!”

Jeven spluttered. “Prisoner transfer isn’t my job! You want to be pointing fingers, point them at yourself! It was your fancy-schmancy car that got wired to blow, after all! You’re the reason that man, Wade or whatever, the reason he’s dead!”

That hit Isabela where it hurt. She grabbed the front of his jacket before Bran could intervene. “You do _not_ say shit like that to me,” she hissed into his face.

Bran predictably intervened, pulling them apart. “Okay, everybody just calm down! There has to be a mole, but pointing fingers isn’t helping. Now that Castillon’s out, Larkin’s definitely going to ground. Velasco knows we bugged him, and that slave deal certainly isn’t going to be happening on Wednesday any more. I’m putting another team on this. You two need to stand down.”

Isabela quickly looked at Aveline, who looked as though Bran had struck her. “Wait, what?”

Bran saw Aveline’s face, and pursed his lips, looking a bit guilty. “I’m sorry, Vallen, but this case has gotten out of hand. We need a fresh start.”

Isabela put a hand on Aveline’s shoulder. She shrugged it off. “But this is _my_ investigation! We’re so close!”

“Not anymore,” Jeven said triumphantly. “We can handle this from here on in. It shouldn’t have been given to a couple of females like you from the beginning.”

Bran rolled his eyes. “Jeven, shut your mouth before you make this worse.” He complied, but not before shooting them a look so smug Isabela yearned to smack it off him.

“Sir, I…” Aveline’s distress was emanating off her in waves. Isabela tugged at her arm, wishing she knew what to say. “Here, Vallen. Let’s go to the precinct. Bran’s new team will need the info we’ve gathered.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say. Aveline tensed like a bull about to charge, and then drooped in submission, which was about ten thousand times worse. She said nothing, but allowed Isabela to lead her to the rental car. She pressed her forehead to the glass of her window as Isabela threw the car into reverse, taking all her frustrations out on the transmission.


	10. Knives Are An Art

Aveline didn’t know it was possible to be this hungover, and it came at a very bad time when she needed all her brain focusing on the ruin her investigation had become and not on the incredible throbbing pain in her forehead. They were in the precinct, pretending to be functioning cops compiling all the information they had on the slaving organization so far, but Aveline felt more like someone infected with the dwarven flesh-eating disease, taint.

“Donnic,” Isabela threw out, swinging her legs back and forth. She had given up the pretense that they were going to help Jeven as soon as they got into the precinct, and was instead throwing out various candidates for the mole.

Aveline winced and took another slug of coffee. “No. I don’t believe that about him.”

“Well, I would prefer not to think such a paragon of manliness was the mole either, but we gotta look at all the angles.”

“You think he’s a…what?”

“A paragon of manliness? I don’t. _You_ sure do.” Isabela continued on before Aveline had time to process the comment or formulate any witty reply. “Wildest possibility: Bran.”

“I don’t see that either. But wait. A paragon of…”

“I’m still sure it’s Jeven.” Isabela raised her mug to her lips and paused, frowning into it. “An empty coffee mug is like an empty bed. Total waste. Anyway, he’s such a slimebag I’m sure it’s him.”

“You don’t think it’s a little _obvious_ that the greasiest cop in the precinct is the mole?”

“Sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.” Isabela crossed the room to the coffeemaker, pondered the machine for a moment, and then unplugged it and brought the whole thing over to her desk. Before Aveline could voice an objection to this line of thinking, she was interrupted by the soft _ding_ of Isabela’s phone.

“Message from Fenris,” Isabela said, checking it. She scanned the line of text and her eyes flared with shock. “I…”

“What? What is it?” Aveline practically vaulted over her desk. Isabela handed her the phone without comment.

**hubert’s warehouse, 2 streets dwn from ugallows ferry. slaves will be there 9am tomrrw, shipped by 12pm. bring lots of guns. delete this don’t reply.**

“What does he mean, don’t reply?” Isabela fumed. “If he put himself in danger I’ll kill him myself.”

“Don’t reply,” Aveline said automatically, her mind still running on the information. “We can’t report this.”

“What?” Isabela was halfway through a reply text.

“I don’t know how he got this info, but if we report it, the mole will know and not only will they change the location, but they’ll know they have a spy there too. You’ll be putting him in worse danger.”

Isabela slowly lowered her phone. “No. You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Maybe this isn’t our investigation anymore, technically, but we’re not letting this pass up, either.” Aveline’s mind was humming with activity now, and despite the pounding hangover, she felt more alive than she had in a while. Castillon was back in her grasp, and so were dozens of potential Fenrises. People she could save, drag back from the brink. “He says bring lots of guns. We’ll take him at his word.” She looked over at Isabela, who was beginning to smile. “Got anything?”

“Come by the Hanged Man tomorrow morning, early.” Isabela poured them both another mug of coffee. “I have guns.”

 

“You keep all this in your _room?”_ Aveline asked in disbelief as Isabela swung open the fridge door. There was no actual food in the fridge; instead, there was a startling array of weaponry. The egg cups were filled with grenades, the butter drawer was stocked with ammunition.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Isabela sighed fondly. “Here’s my baby.” She reached in and yanked out a…

“…a _bazooka?”_

“Yeah. Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Isabela planted her legs firmly as she set it down on the floor with a hefty _thunk_ and loaded it. “Weighs a ton, but if you wanted to, say, storm a gang’s hideout…”

Aveline reached in and pulled out a semiautomatic, trying to squish the sudden flare of fear in her stomach. This was crazy. They were two officers, planning on taking on an entire gang who, for all she knew, knew they were coming and had all sorts of unpleasant things planned.

Isabela glanced at her. “Hey. You okay?”

“Fine.” Aveline grabbed a handful of rounds. “Do you have a backpack? Some of these grenades might be handy.”

They clanked downstairs a half hour later, kitted out in flak vests and leather that Isabela scavenged from various cupboards and drawers around her room. Varric was behind the bar, pulling out various bottles of alcohol and checking the dates on them. He heard them coming and set down a bottle of rum on the bar. “Wow.”

“Hey, Varric?” Isabela called.

“Rivaini?”

“If we die, make it a good story, yeah? A blaze of glory and all that?”

“Tell you what, Rivaini, I’ll make you a deal.” Varric hefted the rum bottle. “I’ll promise to write a good story if you die, but only if you promise you’ll make it back alive. And as an extra incentive, I just found this rum at the back of the bar. Oak-aged twelve-year-old, and it’s all yours if you make it back alive.”

Isabela grinned at him, yanking on a pair of fingerless gloves. “There’s no way I’m not making it back for that rum. Love you.” She blew him a kiss, and they walked outside to their borrowed SUV.

Aveline drove, which was nice for her as it helped keep her mind focused and steady. Isabela seemed completely unfazed, reclining in the passenger seat; but Aveline had learned to read her and there was tension coiled catlike in every muscle.

Halfway there, Isabela spoke. “You know, if we got good info, there’s going to be a lot of slaves there. Probably mostly elves.”

“I know.” Aveline merged onto the road to the docks. Isabela cracked an eye. “Have you ever seen slaves before?”

Aveline opened her mouth to give a quick yes, but then paused. She’d seen pictures, certainly. She’d read more material on the trade than the average undergraduate majoring in Tevinter history. She’d seen footage of slavery ring busts, watched the police officer giving the lecture trace out should-have-dones and shouldn’t-have-dones on the screen. But actually seen slaves before?

“No,” she said finally. “Not in the flesh.”

Isabela nodded slowly. “Just wondering.” She closed her eyes again. Just as Aveline thought Isabela was done, she said “It’s not something you’re really prepared for. Not the first time.”

Aveline’s first impulse was to tell Isabela to knock it off, to stop treating her like a rookie on her first lyrium bust. But she held it in. When Isabela was quiet and the jokes and innuendo weren’t flowing, Isabela was serious. Isabela was trying to show she cared.

“Thanks,” Aveline said finally.

“No problem, big girl.” Neither of them spoke again till they pulled up to the fish cannery, leaving the SUV there. Hubert’s warehouse, where the slave deal was to happen, was three buildings down. They snuck around the back of the fish cannery, keeping to the shadows. They were carrying a lot of weaponry; if they got stopped they could just show their badges, but it would be preferable to stay out of sight and avoid any run-ins with their colleagues.

Isabela reached the warehouse door first, and after making sure Aveline was covering her, jimmied the lock. Not for the first time, Aveline wondered where her partner had picked up all these criminal skills. The door clicked open, and Isabela peeked around the corner, her favorite revolver in hand. She jerked her head at Aveline, “…clear. Cover me.”

They slipped through the door and into a delivery room. Aveline moved pantherlike along the walls, her senses all focused on listening for gang members just around the corner. She could hear a low murmur, and the scent of cigarette smoke permeated the room.

Isabela flattened herself against the wall and peered into the warehouse’s main processing room. She didn’t make a noise, but her eyes widened, and she just barely twitched her fingers, gesturing to Aveline to look too. Aveline moved carefully around the periphery of the entrance, and took cover on the opposite side. She steeled herself and looked in.

Once this warehouse had stored imports from other Free Marches cities, but now it was being used for holding slaves. There must have been hundreds of them, packed into temporary holding cages, far too many to a cage. Isabela was right; she could see by their slight build and facial bone structure that most of them were elves.

Aveline held herself steady, focusing on pulling her abdominal muscles taut, a little trick she’d picked up over the years when she needed something to distract her mind from working overtime. She didn’t want Isabela to know she was _right,_ that seeing people – living, breathing people – packed together into cages like livestock, was something no amount of police videos could have prepared her for. She kept picking out absurd, tiny details – the stitching on an elvhen girl’s dress _maybe her mother did that for her, maybe an aunt_ , the redness of a woman’s eyes as she pressed a doll to her chest _a doll, why a doll, maybe it was her daughter’s, perhaps that’s why her eyes are so red._ To Aveline, all the men had Fenris’s face already; his grim, haunted stare, the shadows across his skin that no amount of his slantwise grins could lighten.

_Pull yourself together_. If she did her job today, none of these men would be Fenris ten years down the road. Case the joint, ID all potential threats. Theirs was the only entrance she could see, but she was sure there was another one hidden from view. Right now, she could see only two guards, both of them with their back to the entrance and chatting amiably, swapping a cigarette. Before them was a heavy oaken table, which probably served as a desk for whoever tallied up the slaves; they were using it as an ashtray.

Aveline looked across at Isabela. _Two?_ she mouthed, holding up two fingers.

Isabela nodded. _Two of us_ , she mouthed back. _Go in?_

Aveline signalled “affirmative.” Isabela looked bewildered. Aveline sighed, and nodded emphatically instead.

“Freeze! Police!” Isabela yelled, running into the room with her revolver cocked. Aveline followed suit, shouting “Police! Hands on your head!”

The two men jerked around, the cigarette falling to the concrete where it drifted into ashes. “What the-” one said.

“Hands on your head!” Isabela shouted at him, gesturing emphatically with the revolver for them to kneel. Grudgingly, slowly, they did, hands raising behind their heads.

“Keep an eye on them,” Aveline said, holstering her pistol. “I’ll see what I can find to tie them up.”

Isabela nodded, then her face went slack with shock, staring over Aveline’s shoulder. “Um, Aveline? Might wanna take that gun out again.”

Aveline turned and was met with the barrel of a semiautomatic. Velasco was grinning behind it. “Guess who?”

Two – three – four – five men filed into the room behind him. The men Isabela had on the ground snatched up their guns and scrambled back, and she yanked another pistol out of her belt to keep both of them at gunpoint.

“Did you guys all come back from break at the same time?” Aveline said, her fingers finding her pistol with practised deftness. Velasco noticed. “That’s far enough.”

She lifted the pistol to his face. “Not a chance. You shoot, so help me Maker you’re going down with me.”

Velasco scowled at her. “Give us the guns and that bag of goodies you’ve got, and maybe we’ll let you live.”

Isabela stepped backward, as did Aveline, until the oaken table was between them and Velasco and his men. “Go ahead,” Aveline said. “I’ve held someone at gunpoint for three days before. Let’s do this.”

Isabela stepped on her toe, lightly but deliberately. “No, Aveline, what are we going to do? Shoot our way out of this? It’s not gonna happen. Put the guns in the bag and give it to them.”

“What?” Aveline said, in a tone of disbelief for the benefit of Velasco and his goons. She didn’t think for one second that Isabela was planning on surrendering, so she was up to something else. Isabela turned her head sideways and gave Aveline the ghost of a wink. “Put the guns in the bag and we’ll slide it over.”

“I thought you were on my _side,”_ Aveline grunted, and shoved her pistol in the bag. Isabela carefully set her beloved revolver on top, and shifted aside some of the weaponry, palming something for just a second. Looked like a…oh no.

Velasco snapped. “Come on already, bitch!”

“It’s in the bag, sweet thing,” Isabela replied, with her trademark calmness in bad situations. “Here you go.” She crouched down like a bowler and slid the bag towards Velasco. One of his goons hefted the bag. “There’s a _lot_ of stuff in here,” he said, flexing it up and down experimentally. “Lotta grenades.”

“One’s missing a pin,” Isabela said sweetly, dangling the ring from her finger.

Velasco didn’t have much time to react beyond raising his eyebrows. Aveline flung the table up as a shield just as the explosion hit. She braced against it as the shockwave reverberated around the room, though she was happy to see that the slave cages were far enough away that while they all looked a little shellshocked, no one was bleeding from the ears.

“There we are,” Isabela said happily, dusting herself off. Aveline tried to push the table off and collapsed with an involuntary cry. Isabela immediately dropped her cheery act. “Aveline? Hey, big girl, speak to me.”

“Damn it,” she groaned. “The table must have come down on my ankle when I flipped it.”

“Can you move it? We’ve got to get some backup here. Doesn’t matter what the mole knows now.”

“I’m trying!” Aveline had just managed to get her injured leg under herself when she heard the telltale click. She looked up to find a grinning man with a gun in each hand, pointing at hers and Isabela’s head. _“Really?”_

The gun nut and his backup brought them to an inner room in the warehouse, what was probably the old director’s office by the looks of it. And who should be waiting for them there but…

“Castillon,” Isabela greeted him as the gunmen tied them both to chairs, Aveline wincing at the pain as they manhandled her leg. “What a nice surprise.”

“Isn’t it?” Castillon was tossing a long serrated knife up and down. On the desk behind him, there was an array of knives more impressive than in a chef’s kitchen. “This is just like when you had me tied up in your precinct. Except now you’re tied up, and look at all these nice knives I have.”

“They are nice.” Isabela was looking them over with a practised eye. “A couple of them are daggers, technically. And that’s an oyster-shucking knife.” She seemed to realize what she said suddenly. “Wait…an oyster-shucking knife?”

“Cutting people up is an art, Isabela.” The gunmen left the room, and Castillon let his fingers play over the assortment of knives. “You have to practise every day. You can’t be afraid of taking risks.”

“It’s not much of a risk if your victims are tied down, is it?” Aveline asked. Castillon laughed at her. “Well, I never did play fair. I am going to enjoy this, though. Isabela, you’re lucky contestant number one.”

“Do your worst,” Isabela said, apparently unaware of the concept of self-preservation. Castillon grinned. “You used to be quite an artist with a knife yourself, Bela.” Aveline couldn’t help but make a strangled noise at this, and Castillon noticed. “Oh, what, you didn’t tell her?”

“Tell her what?” Isabela was plainly playing dumb. Aveline shook her head. “Whatever it is, I don’t really care right now,” she told him, wishing she could believe it.

“I do.” Castillon stepped towards Isabela, playing with the knife between his fingers. “She never told you she used to work for us? Back in Rivain? You never wondered why she had a last name like that? It’s like you being named Aveline Fereldan.” He flipped the knife up, letting it rotate half a dozen times before catching it again, his practised grace making it seem like he’d come out of the womb tossing knives. “She was sold to us there, I guess her mother didn’t care enough to give her a family name…or a real family, come to think of it. I called her my little Rivaini. It stuck after a while.”

“Go to hell,” Isabela spat at him. Castillon merely smiled and let the blade trace down her face till there was the thinnest sliver of blood on her cheek. “Look around you. You’re already in hell. She was a pretty face,” he added, addressing Aveline, “and a pretty clever smuggler. You never wondered where she knew all of us from? She was my best girl.”

“Something changed, though,” Aveline said. “She’s here, and you’re on the other side of the table.”

“She grew a conscience, I guess. Or maybe it was Luis. You remember Luis, don’t you, Bela? You should, you were the one that knifed him.” Isabela shuddered, her eyes filling with tears. Maybe it was just the fact that Aveline was a protective type, or maybe it was because she _cared_ about Isabela and seeing her in so much pain made her want to rip these plastic ties off and make Castillon eat those stupid knives he kept bragging about, or maybe it was just her fight or flight instinct kicking in, but she said loudly “I don’t give a shit about Isabela’s past, but if you don’t shut up about it, I swear I’ll find some way to make you hurt.”

Castillon looked almost surprised. “Huh. Looks like Fereldans have some spirit after all. Maybe you’ll be up first instead.”

The door banged, and they all looked up to see a gunman walk in. “Larkin’s here.”

“Damn.” Castillon set down the knife on the desk. “Excuse me, ladies. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take your time,” Aveline gritted out. Castillon shut the door after him, and they were left alone. She glanced over at Isabela; the woman’s head was hanging, and her shoulders were slumped. Aveline had never seen her look so _defeated._

“Isabela?” she said softly.

“It was when I found out they were slavers.” Her voice was so quiet that even in the silent office Aveline had to strain for it. “Smuggling’s one thing but slaving’s another.” Aveline wanted to say a thousand things. That she had never known, she wished she’d known. Did little girls sold as slaves get a pass for smuggling? Did crime only really count if it was real blood under your fingernails, and not just gold that should have been paid as a tax on items? Were items really so important anyway, when dozens of humans and elves sat waiting downstairs for a life in hell? Perhaps Isabela was truly the good one, no matter what she’d been sneaking past the government’s nose.

“Luis…wasn’t what it sounds like.” Aveline waited, but Isabela held back. Just as soon as she thought she was done talking, Isabela spoke again. “He liked…he liked hurting me.”

“Some people just need the death penalty.” As soon as she said it, Aveline realized how fucked up it sounded, as opposed to a simple _Maker I’m so sorry_ , but Isabela laughed – a full-bodied, real laugh. “Truer words, big girl.” She looked around. “Okay, you’re closer. Can you scootch your chair over to the desk and grab one of those knives?”

Aveline was closer, but she also had a mangled ankle. As she dragged herself over, Isabela kept her going with encouragement like “Castillon’s going to be back any moment” and “I thought you were good at working through pain” until Aveline was finally close enough to grab a knife. Her wrists were secured by plastic ties to the arms, but Isabela’s chair had no arms and the men had simply tied her wrists behind her with rope. Isabela shifted her chair around till she was close enough to Aveline’s hand to awkwardly fumble the knife from her.

“Hurry, hurry,” Aveline hissed as Isabela sawed at the rope.

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” She strained against the rope till – “There, got it.” She bent over to untie her feet and stopped at the sound of voices coming down the corridor.

“Get back in place!” Isabela galumphed across the room as Aveline, every nerve screaming with pain, shifted her chair back. “When he gets close enough, I’ll knife him,” she whispered, and Aveline nodded, screwing up her eyes against the pain.

But it wasn’t Castillon who came through the door. “Oh look, the stripper cops are in trouble!”

“Maker, it’s you,” Aveline said, collapsing in relief. Jeven scanned the room with his gun held high, Martin stepping in after him. Isabela’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t tell if I should be happy to see you, or really sad.”

“How did you know we were here?” Martin bent over to check Aveline’s ankle, and replied “We followed you. Jeven figured you guys were on a lead, and you weren’t giving up.”

“Especially since you have an informant,” Jeven said triumphantly. “I should have seen it right away. Why weren’t you sharing that info with the force?”

“He’s not with the force,” Isabela retorted. “He helps me out as a favor.”

“Uh-huh.” Jeven said. “What does he get in return?”

“If I said blowjobs like you obviously want me to, would that go in your spank bank?” she retorted. Martin raised his head from untying Aveline’s injured leg. “Who’s the informant?”

“Wouldn’t you two like to know.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty valuable information.” Martin stood up. “The force could use that.”

“It’s not helpful now,” Aveline snapped, “we’re already here. Get us untied and we’ll call this in.”

“Yeah, just a second. Seriously, Isabela. Who’s the mole?”

It hit Aveline like a magic bolt then. “Andraste’s ass,” she said slowly. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that earlier.”

Isabela looked up with dawning realization. “Wait…”

“Who’s the mole?” Aveline said accusingly. “We were wondering that ourselves. You’re working with Larkin.”

“Great, now you made me do this.” Martin pulled out his gun, as Jeven looked up. “Do what now?”

The bullet to Jeven’s face sprayed them both in blood and pieces of brain. Isabela yelped as Jeven’s body fell across her, and Aveline jerked away from the sharp report of the gun. “It wasn’t Jeven,” Isabela said, looking down at the body in her lap. “Maker, I feel bad now.”

“How long have you been working with him?” Aveline asked. “Just for money? Is that all you’re enslaving people for?”

“Yeah, the money was nice at the beginning.” Martin holstered his gun. “Making poisons that the force didn’t lecture me for was fun too. It’s always been a bit of a hobby.”

“The beginning.” Aveline started to piece it together. “You’re Larkin.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Martin, Larkin. I probably should have picked a better code name. It seemed funny at the time.”

“You have to step up your game if you think that’s funny,” Isabela spat. “And you’re not getting my informant.”

“That’s cool.” Martin/Larkin turned as Castillon rushed into the room. “I heard a shot.” He glanced down at Jeven, whom Isabela had managed to tip onto the ground while maintaining the illusion her hands were tied. “Oh, just him. He was kind of funny, though, boss.”

“You spend eight hours a day in a car with his misogynistic ass and you’d shoot him too.” Larkin gestured at the knife table. “Go wild. I’m going to go find some of Isabela’s friends and squeeze them for this informant. You can’t have kept him completely hidden.”

Isabela almost, almost, threw the knife at him there and then. Aveline saw the strain in her arms as she held herself back. She didn’t keep her mouth shut, though.

“Yeah, yeah,” Larkin tossed over his shoulder. “Have fun, Castillon.”

“See you later, buddy.”

“Don’t call me buddy.” Larkin disappeared down the hallway. Castillon shrugged and turned to them. “So where were we? Oh, right. Fereldan up first.”

He selected the oyster-shucking knife. “Let’s start small.” Aveline stared him down as he approached. She was confident – like maybe eighty percent sure – that Isabela would get to him before he got to her, but still, didn’t hurt to meet your end gracefully if that was what it ended up being.

Isabela didn’t let her down. As Castillon neared them, she launched up and forwards with her feet still tied to the chair, burying the knife up to the hilt in Castillon’s chest. Aveline felt warm blood splatter all over her, Castillon’s face frozen in a grimace of surprise as he fell forwards. Before the flesh began to seize up, Isabela twisted the knife and yanked it free. She leaned over and sliced through Aveline’s plastic ties, pulling her own feet free.

“Come on!” Isabela said, patting Castillon down for his gun. “We have to get to Larkin before he does something to my friends.”

Aveline tested her ankle. It was agony to walk on, but she could hobble with Isabela’s help. “Where do you think he’ll have gone?”

“Hanged Man,” Isabela said without hesitation. “He knows that’s where Varric is.”


	11. Protect The People

The SUV screeched through the streets of Lowtown, Isabela driving like a woman possessed while Aveline barked orders into her phone. “Dispatch units to the Hanged Man and to the docks, add-…yes I was about to give you the address, don’t interrupt!”

Isabela talked over the address, probably hopelessly confusing the officer on the other end of the line. “Can you walk? Should I just leave you in the car while I get Larkin?”

“…yes, there are slaves there so you will need medical backup – no, hold on – what? Rivaini, you are _not_ taking over this investigation from me, I don’t care if I have a broken leg – no, that wasn’t for you…yes, the Hanged Man, we believe that Larkin is there currently but if not, make sure there’s a city-wide alert for…yes, that’s right, Larkin _is_ Martin, how many times do I have to say that?”

Isabela braked the SUV in the middle of the road in front of the Hanged Man and dashed inside with Castillon’s gun. Aveline tried to follow, she really did, but her ankle gave out under her and collapsed. She crawled up to the door on hands and knees, devoutly hoping that nobody she knew was around to witness it.

Inside, there was no sign of Isabela. There was no sign of anyone, actually. The Hanged Man was often empty in the afternoons, but at the very least, Varric was usually behind the bar. The sight of a vacant bar chilled Aveline – but Larkin couldn’t really have gotten here that quickly?

There was a loud bang from upstairs; it didn’t sound like a gunshot, but Aveline recoiled all the same, then crawled up the stairs as fast as she could. She could hear the low rumble of voices but couldn’t see anyone in the second floor hallway. They seemed to be coming from Varric’s suite. As she crawled closer, she could see Isabela propped against the open door, looking stunned. She heard a squawk from someone inside the room, followed by Isabela waving her hand sluggishly. “Don’t…”

She’d obviously taken a hit to the head. Aveline pulled herself forwards a few lengths, then crouched and, using all the energy she had, flung herself forwards so she slid/crashed into the door next to Isabela. It wasn’t the most graceful of moves, but she had her gun out and up before she even fully surveyed the scenario. Varric was tied up in his cozy writing chair, looking scared but defiant. Larkin was standing beside and slightly behind him, with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. He jerked in surprise as Aveline came crashing in, but recovered fast. “So what happened to Castillon, then?”

“He’s got a knife in his chest.” Aveline held the gun steady, though the pain in her ankle made her feel light-headed. “You’re finished, Larkin.”

“I disagree.” Larkin cocked the gun at Isabela. “I put down your friend here, put you two down, and start over somewhere nice. I hear Tevinter is lovely this time of year.”

“Touch him and you’ll die,” croaked Isabela. Larkin sniggered. “One of you is groggy as a drunken sailor, and one of you can’t walk. Who’s going to stop me?”

Aveline sighted along the pistol. “I don’t need to walk to pull a trigger.”

Larkin suddenly got tired of the game. “Or I just slit his throat right -”

Aveline saw the knife descending and instinct took over. Instinct that had never served her wrong, since she was a young and wide-eyed Miss Vallen applying for a job whose description was nothing more or less than _protect the people_. She pulled the trigger, then once again for surety.

Larkin never got to finish the sentence before he keeled over in agony, clutching at the front of his jeans. Isabela gave a little squeak of shock. “You shot him in the balls!”

She nodded slowly, lowering the gun. “Took a leaf out of your book.”

Varric looked back over his shoulder at Larkin, writhing on the ground. “This is it. Tomorrow morning I’m going straight to the Chantry.”

“You actually shot him in the _balls,”_ Isabela repeated. “Holy shit. I’ve never even done that. That’s crazy! That’s fucking insane!”

“Well, don’t make me feel bad about it!” Aveline leaned back against the door as the adrenaline drained out of her, making the ankle feel about ten times worse. “Owww…”

Isabela turned and wrapped her arms around Aveline, pulling her onto her shoulder. “Oh, no, big girl, don’t feel bad. You saved my buddy’s life. You did good.”

As the world faded and bent and went fuzzy at the edges, Aveline knew she had to own up to it. “You…did good too.” She slid sideways onto Isabela’s ample bosom, faint sirens ringing in her ears.


	12. Partners And Friends

Ever since two weeks ago, when Donnic had discovered Aveline unconscious on Isabela’s lap and had been so concerned she had to make fun of him (just a little bit. She wasn’t a monster), Isabela had been thinking she ought to do something about it. Big girl was sweet on him too. Aveline just concealed her feelings better. Isabela still wasn’t sure if she was actually capable of expressing feelings; every time she tried, she ended up with her foot in her mouth.

But since Aveline had accepted the transfer that Captain Bran suggested, she was going to be spending a lot more time in the Kirkwall precinct. Isabela never shied away from the opportunity to be a matchmaker.

So she sent a couple of texts with the help of Merrill, who thought it was all very cute, and had Varric set the mood very nicely at the Hanged Man that Friday night. She even made him put out roses on the tables. Varric swore she was trying to ruin him, but he was pretty amenable once she explained that it was for Aveline’s benefit. He was getting to be really fond of Aveline after the Larkin incident. He even offered her the same living arrangement that Isabela had, but she had politely declined in favor of her Hightown apartment. Isabela had called her classist and they had spent a merry few hours abusing each other over beers.

Isabela had told Aveline (in a roundabout type way) to be there a little bit early, so when Aveline arrived Isabela waved her over to her seat at the bar. She was still working on that twelve-year-old rum (“it’s a _sipping_ alcohol, Rivaini, not that you’d know anything about those”) so she toasted Aveline with that. “Good to see you, big girl. What brings you here?”

“Oh,” Aveline flushed. “I got a text from Donnic asking if I was free for a beer this Friday.” She looked at Isabela as if daring her to say something. Of course she did.

“Jump on that! And ride it into the sunset.” Isabela winked exaggeratedly to add to the effect. “You get what I mean when I say that, right? I mean that…”

_“Thank_ you, yes, I get it.”

Isabela laughed into her rum. “I’m glad you’re sticking around.”

“Now I know you’re drunk.” But there was a twinkle in Aveline’s eye that belied that statement. “I’m glad I’m staying around here too. It’s where the action is.”

“Like a candy shop full of criminals,” Isabela agreed. She grabbed her bottle of rum and leaned over the bar to rummage for two shot glasses. “Here’s to us.”

Aveline shook her head. “Oh, I’m already going to be having a beer.”

“So? If I know anything about you, you’re going to need a shot before you can talk to Donnic.” She poured out two shots of her rum. “Anyway, Varric says this is a sipping alcohol, so it stands to reason that if a sip’s good, a gulp must be better. Bottoms up!”

Aveline caved, a smile spreading across her face. “Here’s to us.”

“To the cop with the best instincts I’ve come across. And the biggest biceps.” Isabela got a punch to the shoulder for that, but it was worth it. Aveline pretended to glower at her across the shot glass, but she spoiled it by giggling, true warmth spreading across her face. She’d say it was from the alcohol.

“Right, well, I’m going upstairs. I think I’ll find myself some nice erotica and drink myself into a stupor.” She tucked the bottle of rum under her arm. “If I stick around while you and Donnic are on your _date,_ I’ll probably spend it catcalling you.”

Aveline pushed her playfully. “Get your ass upstairs, then.”

“Gone.” She saluted Aveline, and as soon as she was on the second floor, texted Varric. **let me know the second donnic walks in**.

She was just browsing through her bookshelf when her phone buzzed. **Here. And with roses too. Damn it, Rivaini, I didn’t need to put those flowers out.**

She laughed out loud, curling up in her bed with a book in one hand and the bottle in the other. **excellent, keep me posted.** It was shaping up to be a very good night.


End file.
